I've come to notice that the whole "my body, my choice" argument is utterly selfish at its core, thinking only about themselves at the expense of all else. One also wonders if "being control of their own bodies" has to do with their obsession with having the "perfect" body as put into their heads by TV reality shows (with the likes of Kim K, the Jenner girls, etc.), and the fear of stretch marks and their body becoming "out of control" if they had a kid. In addition, from what I've seen from 45 years of history and what has transpired since that infamous decision, abortion teaches that life is cheap, expendable, disposable, a dime a dozen, utterly worthless and of no value whatsoever, and can easily be eliminated if it were pose the slightest inconvenience to those around them.
I think this is a bit too nuanced to demand of others' thinking. It amounts to a distinction without any real meaning. The pro-choice woman is saying "It's in my body, therefore I have the right to decide what happens to it." The pro-life person is responding, "It may be in your body, but it (isn't your body; it) has its own 'bodily rights', regardless of its location". Whether one includes the part I put in parentheses, the meaning is the same from what I can see. The pro-choice woman may latch on to the "it's not your body" portion of the argument (the part in parenthese) as a justification for ignoring the actual argument, which is that they're championing bodily autonomy while hypocritically ignoring the autonomy of the baby's body. If so, then that's an issue we need to deal with, on a strategic level. So I agree that we need to clarify what the other person means by their statement, and then deal with their actual meaning. But this doesn't automatically rule out the use of this response. PLENTY of women (in my experience) do in fact claim that the "fetus" isn't a human being, isn't alive, and has no rights. This article implies that not to be the case-- or says they're statistically a very low portion of the total. But regardless of the number, if you're speaking with a woman who does hold that view, then we agree-- you should deal with the issue they're actually speaking of. So I think we agree that one should identify the meaning behind what the other person is saying, then respond to that meaning rather than to what we think they mean. I guess my objection here is that you rule out the argument implied by the meme (which is itself a response to a meme) as if it were automatically invalid. I don't think it is. But just throwing memes back and forth isn't a good way to change minds. Even if the other "side" chooses this as a way to communicate, we have to get beyond memes and into what the other person actually means when they use them.
We will never get passed exchanging memes as sloppy arguments, so I choose to embrace them, use them and sometimes even make them. Other than adding that, I agree with everything you said here. 🙂
So aside from the fact that memes really shouldn't be used in a debate with a pro-choicer at all (while amusing, they grossly simplify concepts such that a lot of basic assumptions have to be made to understand them properly, and pro-choice people obviously won't have most of those basic assumptions), I totally disagree with your assessment here. I don't think most anyone is fooled into thinking the My Body, My Choice argument implies the unborn as well to the pro-choicer. Most pro-lifers I know take this meme to demonstrate not that pro-choicers are calling the unborn a part of the woman's body, and thus subject to her rules, but that the unborn child has an equally valid claim to bodily autonomy. That is, sure, a woman should have bodily autonomy (as should any man) up until the point that their rights to bodily autonomy infringe on the rights of another's bodily autonomy. In which case more nuanced weighting of competing rights must be considered.
It seems implausible to me that most pro-lifers would interpret this mean as not responding to "my body my choice" by saying "but it's not your body," given that the meme includes the statements "not your body, not your choice." I think those statements strongly indicate that my interpretation of it is correct. If the meme just said "not your choice, you misunderstand how bodily autonomy works and how it relates to the unborn," I'd be a lot more sympathetic. I honestly don't see how it's possible that it means anything other than what I'm saying it means. It may be that your particular community of pro-life people is unusually astute in their understanding of bodily rights arguments, but I've trained thousands of pro-life people all over the country and most of them have struggled with this concept. My post is very much written for them, not for people that basically already get the category of bodily rights arguments.
Uh... ok. Maybe want to change the title of this post then, since even by your argument, the meme itself is not a straw man, but rather one particular version of its interpretation is. I wouldn't have said atheist and agnostics prolifers are "unusually astute". It's not that I've never seen strawmen come from the group. but hey. I'll take it.
The meme is a straw man, because the meme is attempting to respond to "my body, my choice" by saying "it's not your body." "My body, my choice" is almost always a bodily rights argument where the body being referred to is not the baby's.
This seems like a silly hill for you to want to want to die on. Nothing in the meme suggests that "my body my choice" refers to anything but the mother. Merely the oversight in that logic that if my body my choice is true, the name baby's body baby's choice is also true. You seem to have acknowledged that, and based your continued declaration of "this meme is a strawman" on the numbers of pro lifers who have interpreted as refuting prochoicers that suggest the fetus is part of the woman's body. (By the way, there are prochoicers who do that. They aren't in the majority, but they exist). So basically, you could have a prolifer respond to a prochoicers saying my body, my choice with this meme explaining that the baby also has s body and thus should also have a choice, but in your mind, that's still a strawman. Ok man. Let me know when ERI blog posts stop amounting to "this meme is bad because I think most people interpret it this way abs that interpretation is a strawman" and back to the substantive stuff.
Weak argument. "They mean the parts of the woman’s body that are affected by pregnancy, such as her uterus, vagina, ovaries, etc. Those are indisputably her body parts and pregnancy affects them."
Just b/c a women's uterus, vagina, ovaries, etc. are affected by pregnancy, does not mean she has the right to kill a living human being. Anti-abortionists are referring to the body of the living human being that is affected more than the woman - b/c that human is killed.
Abortion is not about the destruction of the vagina or uterus. Abortion is about the destruction of the LIFE inside. Is that which is in the womb a human "life" or not? That is the ONLY issue here.
As a Pro-Life Atheist, I never intervene when I see a Pro-Life theist hurling chapter & verse quotes from scripture towards the pro-abortion forces. I'm in control of my own arguments and word choices, not theirs. I think their arguments don't work but, I also know I'm not the all-knowing flawless being I aspire to be, they might reach someone I can't with my purely secular approach.
My arguments tend to include sarcasm, and even insults I'm sure many other Pro-Life activists might think are unwise and ineffective but, I'm glad to report that I don't get much criticism from our side and I do attract a crowd of our opposition. I'm glad about that and say all this in part because I think it's best for us to have each others backs with support, even when our fellow Pro-Lifers say things in ways we might personally either say differently or not at all.
I appreciate your work and what you've criticized here about using this meme and the argument it presents but (you knew there was a but coming) I think there's a danger of creating a scenario in which Pro-Lifers who are uncomfortable with speaking out if other Pro-Lifers begin criticizing them for saying this and telling them they shouldn't have said that.
So let me be so bold as to give some advice in return... You make your arguments and teach what ones you think work and why, (you're good at that) but avoid saying things like "Never ever ever" when lecturing others about what you think they shouldn't say. That comes off as authoritarian and you risk losing your audience. Cuz I gotta be blunt, while reading this article, I felt Like I was being scolded unfairly.
I think the meme is fine actually and at risk of sounding like I'm using a pro-aborter's line... If you don't like that meme, then don't use it.
Above you recommend "De Facto Guardian and Abortion" to help us respond to the bodily-rights view. In your blog post "Four Practical Dialogue Tips from My Conversation with Brent," you wrote, "While my views have evolved a bit since we published the paper two and a half years ago, I still think it’s the best pro-life essay currently out there on responding to bodily rights arguments." Would be very interested to hear in what ways your views have evolved. Is there any of the essay that you would not recommend using?
When pro-lifers say, “but the baby has its own body,” their point may be the same as the point of the meme, or they may mean “but the baby has its own bodily RIGHTS.” And in fact the untrained pro-life response I've heard most often to the bodily-rights argument is “But the baby also has bodily rights.” That is also a flawed response, but its flaw is not completely easy to identify. In fact the baby DOES have its bodily rights. The thing is that "bodily rights," though as an English phrase it could legitimately mean "the right for one's body not to be destroyed," in actual usage does not mean that. In actual usage it means "the right for one's body not to be USED without permission." It seems to me that that is also the only philosophically useful sense of the term "bodily rights," because any right for one's body not to be destroyed is covered by a right to life. In an abortion situation, no one is trying to use the baby's body, so though the unborn should have bodily rights, I don't think those rights apply at that time. (I said, "No one is trying to use the baby's body." That is true unless someone wants to harvest its organs. In that case its bodily rights should apply, as you pointed out one time in a blog post about Planned Parenthood and Judith Jarvis Thomson.)
I'll expand on this at some point, but the basic gist is that the DFG paper severely underutilizes the intentional killing vs withholding treatment distinction. At the time, I believed the correct response to the version of the cabin in the blizzard where she just doesn't breastfeed the child is to arrest her for murder. I don't believe that anymore. I think it's helpful to go through the exercise and see how far you can get with your hands tied behind your back, as Steve so excellently articulated, but that ultimately we can't get all the way there without untying at least one of our hands. If the woman directly kills the child because she is told she will be rescued immediately if she does, then clearly she should be arrested for murder. I know that Steve is aware of this development in my thinking and I think he is at least sympathetic to it, but last we talked about it I don't think he agreed. You'd have to ask him.
The baby does have bodily rights, but that isn't very distinct from saying it has the right not to be killed, which isn't really a different claim. Clearly both the mother and the baby have bodily rights, but their situations aren't symmetrical and that means the implications of their bodily rights are different. The mother doesn't need the baby to survive, but the baby does. Technically I suppose the baby should have the right to elect to disconnect from its mother if it was capable of electing that, but it wouldn't want to. The violinist has bodily rights too, but that doesn't mean he has the right to the other person's kidneys. Given all that, I think responding to a bodily rights argument by saying "but the baby has bodily rights" just comes from a confusion of what the structure of the bodily rights argument is. It's a nifty rhetorical one-liner, but it does nothing to respond to the substance of the pro-choice objection, and hence I don't encourage it. And yes, I think the harvesting of the baby's organs is legitimately a violation of their bodily rights, in the same way that it's a violation of an adult person's bodily rights to harvest their organs without consent. While the fetus is not capable of consenting, it is too much of a conflict of interest to allow the mother to make that call, given that she is ordering the death of the child, and even more obviously too much of a conflict of interest for the actual killers to harvest those organs and benefit from them.
I very much appreciate your taking the time for such a thoughtful and helpful reply. I will have to get back to DFG and spend some more time with it in order to see if all your above points are clear to me. Bodily-rights arguments work by pointing out the analogies between pregnancy and some situation, real (McFall v. Shimp) or imaginary (the violinist, people-seeds), in which our sympathies will be on the side of a right to refuse to let one’s body be used. And the pro-life side pushes back by either cataloguing the DISanalogies between the two situations (as do writers like Kaczor and Beckwith), or points out for its own part the analogies between pregnancy and some situation, real or imaginary (the cabin in the blizzard) in which our sympathies will be on the side of an OBLIGATION to let one’s body be used. I feel, however, that while analogies and disanalogies are indeed a crucial means of deflating the bodily-rights argument, there is another approach that has, so far as I know, been overlooked, though it could make a big difference. That approach begins by tracing bodily rights to their source: I think that society grants bodily rights in the first place to accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership. If we really think about it, individual body ownership (I own my body, you own yours, as opposed to, say, collective ownership by society of all bodies) is not a philosophical necessity. It is all psychological, though it is a psychological reality that has no doubt served an important evolutionary purpose and that society can violate only at its peril. (I'm not denying here that bodily rights might be God-given or might constitute some Kantian principle, but legislators and judges are not necessarily theologians or philosophers. I think the legislators and judges have institutionalized bodily rights, as the judge found them to exist in the McFall v. Shimp case, to accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership.) If what the moral intuitions of society dictate is that we should accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership, this raises the question, is that sense equally strong in all situations, or does it vary from situation to situation? Is it as strong in a pregnant woman whose abortion is being opposed by society as it was assumed to be in David Shimp? Is it as strong in a pregnant woman, who knows that she owes her existence to gestation and is conscious of trying to thwart what her body wants to do, as in David Shimp, who never received a bone-marrow transplant from anyone and just wants to let nature take its course? It may seem now that I'm arguing from disanalogies, which I said I wouldn't do. But I'm not arguing that way. I'm not arguing about how philosophers should see the disanalogies. I'm pointing out how the different situations of an abortion-minded woman and of Shimp would result in different degrees of possessiveness about their bodies and different senses of the sacredness of their body ownership. If it's true that what the moral intuitions of society dictate is that we should accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership, then those moral intuitions would dictate that we should accommodate it proportionally to how it is felt, at a deep level, in different situations.
" While the fetus is not capable of consenting, it is too much of a conflict of interest to allow the mother to make that call, given that she is ordering the death of the child, and even more obviously too much of a conflict of interest for the actual killers to harvest those organs and benefit from them" I disagree with you on your last sentence. Of course the person doing the gestating should make the call about whether or not to continue gestating. It her body providing the nutrients, her body that is sustaining that life and must undergo the trauma of childbirth. Nobody should be making that decision but her, since she owns her body. It is like saying, i am going to buy a pizza and provide lunch for a group of people. Since i am the one buying the pizza (providing the food), i get the final say on how many slices i get to eat, and how many each person gets too. The person who is getting the pizza for free does NOT get to make that call, ONLY the person buying the pizza get too. Same thing with the mother, since she is the one providing in her body for the life, she gets to decide whether to do so or not. The embryo/fetus has NO SAY, since it is the one in need of a body to be gestated, it cannot make any demands, as callous as it may sound, that is the reality. The one paying for the pizza calls the shots on who gets to eat pizza. The one doing the gestating gets to call the shots on whether to continue gestating or to abort the pregnancy.
There is no comparison between ordering pizza and "deciding how many slices you get to eat" and creating a dependent child, through one's voluntary actions, and then deciding to duck one's responsibilities and kill that child. Before you start in on "organ donation" (as you so often do), I will say that INACTION resulting in a stranger's death is not morally in the same league as CREATING a child, and acting willfully to KILL that child. I will also be willing to bet you that if, hypothetically, someone were kidnapped, strapped down, and a third party started forcefully "donating" some blood to an unconscious recipient, it would STILL be illegal to shot the unconscious, innocent recipient to STOP the illegal transfusion.
Creating a child is not always voluntary, since women and men cannot turn off their fertility, having sex is not enough to consent to being pregnant. Since having sex does not always lead to pregnancy, consent to sex is NOT consent to pregnancy. Consent has to be intentional, not just an involuntary biological function. By using birth control or seeking to terminate, it is obvious that the person or persons involved are NOT consenting to pregnancy. I disagree with your last statement, one has the right to detach yourself using whatever force necessary. I will remind you i am not debating the morality of an action, i am debating bodily rights.
Having sex is knowingly leaving oneself OPEN to pregnancy. The ancients did not have effective contraception. They did not have "mother-safe" abortions, either. Since they desired sex as much as modern day people do, AND did not want children all the time, their chosen method was infanticide. Modern abortions are designed to kill the SAME babies that ancient infanticide was, only at a younger age--sometimes only 'slightly' younger--age. As I said on the other thread, before the invention of artificial infant formula, a women's body--usually the baby's mother--was also required for many months AFTER birth to keep the baby alive. I feel one's obligations to the young that they create DO require them to protect them--with their bodies, if necessary--until their care can be safely handed over to another.
Take your pick infanticide or abortion? If you know infanticide was used as a form of birth control what makes you think that would not return in greater numbers if abortion is outlawed? You simply cannot make people care for unwanted children. I would rather abortion over infanticide hands down.
As I said, both kill the SAME babies, and both come from the SAME mode of thinking that existing human like is "sacrificable" if they are "inconvenient". I really don't see the same moral difference you do--especially in later pregnancy.
The problem with approaches that take the position that the fetus has a body and therefore have bodily rights is that they misinterpret the principles involved in body integrity and personal autonomy. Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. Part IV of this article focuses on the concept of personal autonomy, but it says (in short), that it can be understood as the ability of individuals to decide for themselves what their lives will be like. http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1417&context=lawreview Fetuses, particularly the ones as early in their development as the vast majority are aborted, is incapable of deciding anything for themselves. So, while there are two bodies involved, only one is capable of making a choice and, consequently, only one has a right to personal bodily autonomy.
If you ask a newborn "can I kill you?" they will not respond. That doesn't mean we can kill them. This temporary lack of being able to decide doesn't justify killing.
No one is saying "we" should able to kill anyone or anything. In fact, I don't think there should be a ""we" involved in an abortion decision. I think there should just one "she". "You are the one who thinks its a decision "we" should make.
Killing a human being that has done nothing wrong is a decision no one should be able to legally make (unless doctors determine it is the one and only way to save the life of a woman - otherwise you'd have two dead human beings)
That's your opinion and you are welcome to it. But, it isn't the opinion of the majority of people in the US and It certainly isn't currently the case.
There have been polls that have shown that a majority of people in the US support abortion restrictions after 20 weeks (which is before viability) or if the reason is financial. So yes, most people do have a fundamental disagreement with Roe V Wade.
Sorry, but on Feb. 2-6, 2017, Quinnipiac University polled registered voters nationwide and asked: "In general, do you agree or disagree with the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion?" Results showed that 67% said they generally agreed with Roe v Wade and only 29% said they disagreed with it. So, I think that pretty clearly shows that most people do not have a fundamental disagreement with Roe v Wade.
Many people don't now that Roe V Wade allows a woman to kill her unborn son or daughter for any reason she wants up until viability... so unless the poll question states that Roe allows abortion until viability (around 24 weeks), it is an invalid question. Polls that specifically asked about 20 week bans showed that most were OK with restrictions after 20 weeks.... Can you honestly look at an ultrasound picture of an unborn child at 16 or 20 weeks and say loud and proud "I support a woman killing a human being at that stage of development for any reason she wants?" http://www.pregnancysymptomsweekbyweek.org/sites/all/themes/pswbw/images/ultrasound/16_week_ultrasound_3d.jpg
Does how an embryo or fetus dictate whether it should be allowed to be aborted? Here's an embryo at 8 weeks : It certainly doesn't look anything like a human being, does it? But, I imagine that wouldn't support a woman killing it for any reason she wants just because of how it looks---would you?
Aww.... you didn't answer my question.... And no, I don't support abortion at 8 weeks, because it really doesn't matter what a human being looks like - they shouldn't be killed by their parents because they are inconvenient or unwanted.... Some people however DO discriminate based on level of development or location (just like others in the past discriminated based on skin color or religion). I thought If I could show you how developed an unborn child was that maybe you would realize they should be protected and not killed.... at least by 16 or 20 weeks.
I was pretty sure you yourself didn't think what a human being looks like has anything to do with whether it should be allowable that it be aborted. So, it seems rather disingenuous to ask the question you did. I made it a point to educate myself on the development from zygote to fetus a long time ago. in fact, I have personally seen an actual miscarriage, up close and personal, with my wife's first pregnancy. It's really arrogant that pro-lifers assume everyone except them is so ignorant about such things. I don't think the term discrimination is an appropriate term to use with a zygote, embryo, or early fetus. To discriminate is usually defined as to unfairly treat a person or group differently from other people or groups. I don't think a fetus becomes a person, in any meaningful sense, until a point after when almost all abortions have been performed. So, prior to that point there isn't even anyone there to discriminate against.
Based on the number of times I've heard the phrase "clump of cells" it's not arrogant to assume many people who support abortion are ignorant of the development of an unborn human being. Discrimination doesn't just apply to people.... if it did then perhaps there was no discrimination going in on the days of slavery because slaves weren't considered full people in the eyes of the law. I'm sure Hitler didn't consider Jewish people as people.... he called them "parasites" to try to justify his discrimination and killing. Blacks law dictionary defines "person" as "human being". Are you honestly saying though that you support killing human beings because you don't think they are people? That is discrimination....
All of our bodies are really just clumps of cells, aren't they? I reason I see it as arrogant for pro-lifers to assume that they know more about science/biology than pro-choicers is that statistically support for legal abortion is correlated with having more education. Pews - Views on abortion by level of education, 2017 "About seven-in-ten college graduates (69%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 57% of those with some college education. Opinion is more evenly divided among those with a high school degree or less: 49% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 48% say it should be illegal in all or most cases." http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ 1 U.S. Code § 8 - “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant (a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8 Please note: "who is born alive".
Part 1: As. I pointed out earlier, when a different Quinnipiac poll asked: "In general, do you agree or disagree with the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion?", 67% said they generally agreed with Roe v Wade and only 29% said they disagreed with it. The important point here is what is "fundamental" in Roe v Wade and/or what constitutes general agreement/disagreement. The poll question addressing Roe was pretty clear that what was considered fundamental to Roe v Wade was that a woman has a right to an abortion (something I agree with) and 67% of voters agreed, as well. It is true that a Jan. 5-9, 2017 Quinnipiac University poll asked registered voters nationwide and asked: "If a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy were enacted in the state in which you live, would you support or oppose that policy?" The results were even at 46% who would support and 46% who would oppose. But that doesn't really matter, because the fundamental question is whether a woman has a right to an abortion or not. But, Roe also ruled that there could be limits on abortion. However,when those limits occur isn't fundamental and have, in fact, changed since the original decision; originally, Roe set up a trimester framework with the third trimester being when abortion could be proscribed. To look at it another way, almost 99% of all abortions occur by 20 weeks. So you can support a 20 week ban and still agree with Roe about a woman's right to an abortion 99% of the time a woman seeks one. The pro-life position is directly opposed to what is most fundamental in Roe and contends a woman does not have a right to an abortion (something pretty much every poll shows is not what most people think). So, even if it some folks support abortion rights, but limit those rights to 20 weeks, they still support a woman's right to an abortion in 99% of cases and oppose the pro-life agenda. So, why do you make such a big deal about a 20 week ban?
It doesn't matter if 99% on abortions are done before 20 weeks. If someone supports restricting them after 20 weeks (which is before viability) then they have a fundamental disagreement with Roe V Wade. Also, a gallup poll a few years back asked about specific reasons for abortion. Of course if the reason was the woman's physical health people were in favor of abortion being legal. If the reason were financial however, 61% said abortion should be illegal. The Supreme court has been wrong before. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that it is OK to kill an unborn child up until viability. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that "privacy" can be used to kill someone.University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt: “As a constitutional argument Roe is barely coherent. The Court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.”
We obviously disagree on what is fundamental to Roe v Wade, I presented what I thought and why the polls seemed to reflect my understanding. There is no point in my continuing to argue the point. You have apparently made up your mind and I have no interest in trying to change it and I don't intend to change mine. The Gallup poll really just shows how uniform opposition to abortion for financial reasons is among pro-lifers, while, although the majority of pro-choicers support abortion for financial reasons, their support is not as uniform. I looked at the latest poll data I could find from Gallup. It was from 2011 and it said: "The most contentious area of abortion policy has to do with abortions conducted for financial reasons. Nearly two-thirds of pro-choice adults, 64%, compared with only 9% of pro-life Americans, say abortion should be legal when the woman or family cannot afford to raise the child." The fact remains that financial circumstances are one of the most cited reasons women get abortions. I think its pretty easy for pro-lifers to sit back and judge what women who are in dire financial circumstances do when they themselves are not in that same situation. No where in the constitution does it even hint that blacks and women should be allowed to vote. That's why the constitution had to be amended twice. In the Roe decision. it was stated that no where in the constitution are the unborn considered persons and, consequently, they are not deserving of any rights at all, much less more rights than the mother. Andrew Koppelman of the Northwestern University School of Law, has made the case for legal based on the Thirteenth Amendment which deals with forced labor. But, I'm not an expert in constitutional law and I'm fairly certain you aren't either.
Re: Polls - "We may not know exactly what Americans think about abortion, but we do know with certainty that the policy the American people want is a policy that is incompatible with Roe v. Wade." http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2014/02/26/what-do-americans-think-about-abortion/ Telling someone they cannot kill a child or unborn child because of money isn't about judging, it's about protecting. If something isn't in the Constitution the Constitution either needs to be amended or states get to decide... The Supreme Court cannot make up laws. We know that dogs aren't people yet we can have state laws saying they cannot be abused. We can also have laws restricting abortion after viability. We should be able to have laws protecting unborn children before viability.
We do not know with certainty that the policy the American people want is a policy that is incompatible with Roe v. Wade. In fact when asked directly if they would overturn it in its entirety a majority said they wouldn't . I'll ask you what I asked my kids when they were little---What part of "no" don't you understand? SCOTUS has ruled that laws protecting unborn children before viability violate a woman's rights under the constitution. That is simply a fact, regardless of whether you like or accept it or not.
There was a headline a few years ago titled "Most Americans under 30 don’t know Roe was about abortion"....So asking people if they support Roe V Wade is not accurate unless the poll says something like "Do you support Roe V Wade - the decision that allows women to have an abortion for any reason they want until viability (approx 24 weeks)?" SCOTUS has been wrong before. They once ruled that "Separate but Equal" was ok. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that killing an unborn child is OK.
first - ultrasounds and prenatal tests have been wrong before and healthier than expected babies born. There are babies alive today because their mothers gave birth despite "doctors" telling them their babies would die right at birth and they should kill instead of giving the a chance. Abortion shouldn't be done because a doctor says the baby will die at birth or within a few weeks after birth. second - the story you posted was just one case. There are women who have abortions after viability for reasons other than fatal fetal defects. Dr. Susan Robinson, who performs third-trimester abortions at her clinic in Albuquerque, admits that not all the women who come in for late abortions are there because of a deformity or flaw in the baby or when the life of the mother is in danger. : “..there’s the group of women who didn’t know they were pregnant, They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate. ‘I already have three children, my husband just lost his job and I can barely put food on the table. If I add a new baby to this family, we’ll all go under.’ These are healthy women having abortions on babies who are capable of being born alive. Rather than deliver the healthy, normal child and put him or her up for adoption by one of the two many couples on waiting lists for babies, the parents choose to kill their babies mere weeks before they could be born. Sad. Three - A recent poll showed most Americans are OK with abortion being illegal in the 2nd trimester. - i.e. Most Americans have a fundamental disagreement wit Roe V Wade. Roe V Wade needs to be overturned.
In addition, from what I've seen from 45 years of history and what has transpired since that infamous decision, abortion teaches that life is cheap, expendable, disposable, a dime a dozen, utterly worthless and of no value whatsoever, and can easily be eliminated if it were pose the slightest inconvenience to those around them.
The pro-choice woman may latch on to the "it's not your body" portion of the argument (the part in parenthese) as a justification for ignoring the actual argument, which is that they're championing bodily autonomy while hypocritically ignoring the autonomy of the baby's body. If so, then that's an issue we need to deal with, on a strategic level. So I agree that we need to clarify what the other person means by their statement, and then deal with their actual meaning. But this doesn't automatically rule out the use of this response.
PLENTY of women (in my experience) do in fact claim that the "fetus" isn't a human being, isn't alive, and has no rights. This article implies that not to be the case-- or says they're statistically a very low portion of the total. But regardless of the number, if you're speaking with a woman who does hold that view, then we agree-- you should deal with the issue they're actually speaking of.
So I think we agree that one should identify the meaning behind what the other person is saying, then respond to that meaning rather than to what we think they mean. I guess my objection here is that you rule out the argument implied by the meme (which is itself a response to a meme) as if it were automatically invalid. I don't think it is. But just throwing memes back and forth isn't a good way to change minds. Even if the other "side" chooses this as a way to communicate, we have to get beyond memes and into what the other person actually means when they use them.
I don't think most anyone is fooled into thinking the My Body, My Choice argument implies the unborn as well to the pro-choicer. Most pro-lifers I know take this meme to demonstrate not that pro-choicers are calling the unborn a part of the woman's body, and thus subject to her rules, but that the unborn child has an equally valid claim to bodily autonomy. That is, sure, a woman should have bodily autonomy (as should any man) up until the point that their rights to bodily autonomy infringe on the rights of another's bodily autonomy. In which case more nuanced weighting of competing rights must be considered.
It may be that your particular community of pro-life people is unusually astute in their understanding of bodily rights arguments, but I've trained thousands of pro-life people all over the country and most of them have struggled with this concept. My post is very much written for them, not for people that basically already get the category of bodily rights arguments.
I wouldn't have said atheist and agnostics prolifers are "unusually astute". It's not that I've never seen strawmen come from the group. but hey. I'll take it.
So basically, you could have a prolifer respond to a prochoicers saying my body, my choice with this meme explaining that the baby also has s body and thus should also have a choice, but in your mind, that's still a strawman.
Ok man. Let me know when ERI blog posts stop amounting to "this meme is bad because I think most people interpret it this way abs that interpretation is a strawman" and back to the substantive stuff.
Just b/c a women's uterus, vagina, ovaries, etc. are affected by pregnancy, does not mean she has the right to kill a living human being. Anti-abortionists are referring to the body of the living human being that is affected more than the woman - b/c that human is killed.
Nice try though.
My arguments tend to include sarcasm, and even insults I'm sure many other Pro-Life activists might think are unwise and ineffective but, I'm glad to report that I don't get much criticism from our side and I do attract a crowd of our opposition. I'm glad about that and say all this in part because I think it's best for us to have each others backs with support, even when our fellow Pro-Lifers say things in ways we might personally either say differently or not at all.
I appreciate your work and what you've criticized here about using this meme and the argument it presents but (you knew there was a but coming) I think there's a danger of creating a scenario in which Pro-Lifers who are uncomfortable with speaking out if other Pro-Lifers begin criticizing them for saying this and telling them they shouldn't have said that.
So let me be so bold as to give some advice in return... You make your arguments and teach what ones you think work and why, (you're good at that) but avoid saying things like "Never ever ever" when lecturing others about what you think they shouldn't say. That comes off as authoritarian and you risk losing your audience. Cuz I gotta be blunt, while reading this article, I felt Like I was being scolded unfairly.
I think the meme is fine actually and at risk of sounding like I'm using a pro-aborter's line... If you don't like that meme, then don't use it.
Would be very interested to hear in what ways your views have evolved. Is there any of the essay that you would not recommend using?
That is also a flawed response, but its flaw is not completely easy to identify. In fact the baby DOES have its bodily rights.
The thing is that "bodily rights," though as an English phrase it could legitimately mean "the right for one's body not to be destroyed," in actual usage does not mean that. In actual usage it means "the right for one's body not to be USED without permission."
It seems to me that that is also the only philosophically useful sense of the term "bodily rights," because any right for one's body not to be destroyed is covered by a right to life.
In an abortion situation, no one is trying to use the baby's body, so though the unborn should have bodily rights, I don't think those rights apply at that time.
(I said, "No one is trying to use the baby's body." That is true unless someone wants to harvest its organs. In that case its bodily rights should apply, as you pointed out one time in a blog post about Planned Parenthood and Judith Jarvis Thomson.)
And yes, I think the harvesting of the baby's organs is legitimately a violation of their bodily rights, in the same way that it's a violation of an adult person's bodily rights to harvest their organs without consent. While the fetus is not capable of consenting, it is too much of a conflict of interest to allow the mother to make that call, given that she is ordering the death of the child, and even more obviously too much of a conflict of interest for the actual killers to harvest those organs and benefit from them.
I will have to get back to DFG and spend some more time with it in order to see if all your above points are clear to me.
Bodily-rights arguments work by pointing out the analogies between pregnancy and some situation, real (McFall v. Shimp) or imaginary (the violinist, people-seeds), in which our sympathies will be on the side of a right to refuse to let one’s body be used. And the pro-life side pushes back by either cataloguing the DISanalogies between the two situations (as do writers like Kaczor and Beckwith), or points out for its own part the analogies between pregnancy and some situation, real or imaginary (the cabin in the blizzard) in which our sympathies will be on the side of an OBLIGATION to let one’s body be used.
I feel, however, that while analogies and disanalogies are indeed a crucial means of deflating the bodily-rights argument, there is another approach that has, so far as I know, been overlooked, though it could make a big difference. That approach begins by tracing bodily rights to their source:
I think that society grants bodily rights in the first place to accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership. If we really think about it, individual body ownership (I own my body, you own yours, as opposed to, say, collective ownership by society of all bodies) is not a philosophical necessity. It is all psychological, though it is a psychological reality that has no doubt served an important evolutionary purpose and that society can violate only at its peril.
(I'm not denying here that bodily rights might be God-given or might constitute some Kantian principle, but legislators and judges are not necessarily theologians or philosophers. I think the legislators and judges have institutionalized bodily rights, as the judge found them to exist in the McFall v. Shimp case, to accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership.)
If what the moral intuitions of society dictate is that we should accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership, this raises the question, is that sense equally strong in all situations, or does it vary from situation to situation? Is it as strong in a pregnant woman whose abortion is being opposed by society as it was assumed to be in David Shimp?
Is it as strong in a pregnant woman, who knows that she owes her existence to gestation and is conscious of trying to thwart what her body wants to do, as in David Shimp, who never received a bone-marrow transplant from anyone and just wants to let nature take its course?
It may seem now that I'm arguing from disanalogies, which I said I wouldn't do. But I'm not arguing that way. I'm not arguing about how philosophers should see the disanalogies. I'm pointing out how the different situations of an abortion-minded woman and of Shimp would result in different degrees of possessiveness about their bodies and different senses of the sacredness of their body ownership.
If it's true that what the moral intuitions of society dictate is that we should accommodate people's psychological sense of body ownership, then those moral intuitions would dictate that we should accommodate it proportionally to how it is felt, at a deep level, in different situations.
While the fetus is not capable of consenting, it is too much of a
conflict of interest to allow the mother to make that call, given that
she is ordering the death of the child, and even more obviously too much
of a conflict of interest for the actual killers to harvest those
organs and benefit from them"
I disagree with you on your last sentence. Of course the person doing the gestating should make the call about whether or not to continue gestating. It her body providing the nutrients, her body that is sustaining that life and must undergo the trauma of childbirth. Nobody should be making that decision but her, since she owns her body.
It is like saying, i am going to buy a pizza and provide lunch for a group of people. Since i am the one buying the pizza (providing the food), i get the final say on how many slices i get to eat, and how many each person gets too. The person who is getting the pizza for free does NOT get to make that call, ONLY the person buying the pizza get too.
Same thing with the mother, since she is the one providing in her body for the life, she gets to decide whether to do so or not. The embryo/fetus has NO SAY, since it is the one in need of a body to be gestated, it cannot make any demands, as callous as it may sound, that is the reality. The one paying for the pizza calls the shots on who gets to eat pizza. The one doing the gestating gets to call the shots on whether to continue gestating or to abort the pregnancy.
Before you start in on "organ donation" (as you so often do), I will say that INACTION resulting in a stranger's death is not morally in the same league as CREATING a child, and acting willfully to KILL that child.
I will also be willing to bet you that if, hypothetically, someone were kidnapped, strapped down, and a third party started forcefully "donating" some blood to an unconscious recipient, it would STILL be illegal to shot the unconscious, innocent recipient to STOP the illegal transfusion.
By using birth control or seeking to terminate, it is obvious that the person or persons involved are NOT consenting to pregnancy.
I disagree with your last statement, one has the right to detach yourself using whatever force necessary.
I will remind you i am not debating the morality of an action, i am debating bodily rights.
The ancients did not have effective contraception.
They did not have "mother-safe" abortions, either.
Since they desired sex as much as modern day people do, AND did not want children all the time, their chosen method was infanticide.
Modern abortions are designed to kill the SAME babies that ancient infanticide was, only at a younger age--sometimes only 'slightly' younger--age.
As I said on the other thread, before the invention of artificial infant formula, a women's body--usually the baby's mother--was also required for many months AFTER birth to keep the baby alive.
I feel one's obligations to the young that they create DO require them to protect them--with their bodies, if necessary--until their care can be safely handed over to another.
You simply cannot make people care for unwanted children.
I would rather abortion over infanticide hands down.
I really don't see the same moral difference you do--especially in later pregnancy.
Part IV of this article focuses on the concept of personal autonomy, but it says (in short), that it can be understood as the ability of individuals to decide for themselves what their lives will be like.
http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1417&context=lawreview
Fetuses, particularly the ones as early in their development as the vast majority are aborted, is incapable of deciding anything for themselves. So, while there are two bodies involved, only one is capable of making a choice and, consequently, only one has a right to personal bodily autonomy.
Polls that specifically asked about 20 week bans showed that most were OK with restrictions after 20 weeks....
Can you honestly look at an ultrasound picture of an unborn child at 16 or 20 weeks and say loud and proud "I support a woman killing a human being at that stage of development for any reason she wants?"
http://www.pregnancysymptomsweekbyweek.org/sites/all/themes/pswbw/images/ultrasound/16_week_ultrasound_3d.jpg
Here's an embryo at 8 weeks :
It certainly doesn't look anything like a human being, does it? But, I imagine that wouldn't support a woman killing it for any reason she wants just because of how it looks---would you?
I made it a point to educate myself on the development from zygote to fetus a long time ago. in fact, I have personally seen an actual miscarriage, up close and personal, with my wife's first pregnancy. It's really arrogant that pro-lifers assume everyone except them is so ignorant about such things.
I don't think the term discrimination is an appropriate term to use with a zygote, embryo, or early fetus. To discriminate is usually defined as to unfairly treat a person or group differently from other people or groups. I don't think a fetus becomes a person, in any meaningful sense, until a point after when almost all abortions have been performed. So, prior to that point there isn't even anyone there to discriminate against.
Discrimination doesn't just apply to people.... if it did then perhaps there was no discrimination going in on the days of slavery because slaves weren't considered full people in the eyes of the law. I'm sure Hitler didn't consider Jewish people as people.... he called them "parasites" to try to justify his discrimination and killing.
Blacks law dictionary defines "person" as "human being". Are you honestly saying though that you support killing human beings because you don't think they are people? That is discrimination....
Pews - Views on abortion by level of education, 2017
"About seven-in-ten college graduates (69%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 57% of those with some college education. Opinion is more evenly divided among those with a high school degree or less: 49% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 48% say it should be illegal in all or most cases."
http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
1 U.S. Code § 8 - “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant
“Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant
(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8
Please note: "who is born alive".
As. I pointed out earlier, when a different Quinnipiac poll asked: "In general, do you agree or disagree with the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion?", 67% said they generally agreed with Roe v Wade and only 29% said they disagreed with it.
The important point here is what is "fundamental" in Roe v Wade and/or what constitutes general agreement/disagreement. The poll question addressing Roe was pretty clear that what was considered fundamental to Roe v Wade was that a woman has a right to an abortion (something I agree with) and 67% of voters agreed, as well.
It is true that a Jan. 5-9, 2017 Quinnipiac University poll asked registered voters nationwide and asked: "If a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy were enacted in the state in which you live, would you support or oppose that policy?" The results were even at 46% who would support and 46% who would oppose.
But that doesn't really matter, because the fundamental question is whether a woman has a right to an abortion or not. But, Roe also ruled that there could be limits on abortion. However,when those limits occur isn't fundamental and have, in fact, changed since the original decision; originally, Roe set up a trimester framework with the third trimester being when abortion could be proscribed.
To look at it another way, almost 99% of all abortions occur by 20 weeks. So you can support a 20 week ban and still agree with Roe about a woman's right to an abortion 99% of the time a woman seeks one.
The pro-life position is directly opposed to what is most fundamental in Roe and contends a woman does not have a right to an abortion (something pretty much every poll shows is not what most people think). So, even if it some folks support abortion rights, but limit those rights to 20 weeks, they still support a woman's right to an abortion in 99% of cases and oppose the pro-life agenda.
So, why do you make such a big deal about a 20 week ban?
Also, a gallup poll a few years back asked about specific reasons for abortion. Of course if the reason was the woman's physical health people were in favor of abortion being legal. If the reason were financial however, 61% said abortion should be illegal.
The Supreme court has been wrong before. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that it is OK to kill an unborn child up until viability. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that "privacy" can be used to kill someone.University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt: “As a constitutional argument Roe is barely coherent. The Court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.”
The Gallup poll really just shows how uniform opposition to abortion for financial reasons is among pro-lifers, while, although the majority of pro-choicers support abortion for financial reasons, their support is not as uniform. I looked at the latest poll data I could find from Gallup. It was from 2011 and it said:
"The most contentious area of abortion policy has to do with abortions conducted for financial reasons. Nearly two-thirds of pro-choice adults, 64%, compared with only 9% of pro-life Americans, say abortion should be legal when the woman or family cannot afford to raise the child."
The fact remains that financial circumstances are one of the most cited reasons women get abortions. I think its pretty easy for pro-lifers to sit back and judge what women who are in dire financial circumstances do when they themselves are not in that same situation.
No where in the constitution does it even hint that blacks and women should be allowed to vote. That's why the constitution had to be amended twice. In the Roe decision. it was stated that no where in the constitution are the unborn considered persons and, consequently, they are not deserving of any rights at all, much less more rights than the mother.
Andrew Koppelman of the Northwestern University School of Law, has made the case for legal based on the Thirteenth
Amendment which deals with forced labor. But, I'm not an expert in constitutional law and I'm fairly certain you aren't either.
Telling someone they cannot kill a child or unborn child because of money isn't about judging, it's about protecting.
If something isn't in the Constitution the Constitution either needs to be amended or states get to decide... The Supreme Court cannot make up laws. We know that dogs aren't people yet we can have state laws saying they cannot be abused. We can also have laws restricting abortion after viability. We should be able to have laws protecting unborn children before viability.
SCOTUS has ruled that laws protecting unborn children before viability violate a woman's rights under the constitution. That is simply a fact, regardless of whether you like or accept it or not.
SCOTUS has been wrong before. They once ruled that "Separate but Equal" was ok. No where in the Constitution does it even hint that killing an unborn child is OK.
second - the story you posted was just one case. There are women who have abortions after viability for reasons other than fatal fetal defects. Dr. Susan Robinson, who performs third-trimester abortions at her clinic in Albuquerque, admits that not all the women who come in for late abortions are there because of a deformity or flaw in the baby or when the life of the mother is in danger. :
“..there’s the group of women who didn’t know they were pregnant, They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate. ‘I already have three children, my husband just lost his job and I can barely put food on the table. If I add a new baby to this family, we’ll all go under.’
These are healthy women having abortions on babies who are capable of being born alive. Rather than deliver the healthy, normal child and put him or her up for adoption by one of the two many couples on waiting lists for babies, the parents choose to kill their babies mere weeks before they could be born. Sad.
Three - A recent poll showed most Americans are OK with abortion being illegal in the 2nd trimester. - i.e. Most Americans have a fundamental disagreement wit Roe V Wade. Roe V Wade needs to be overturned.