A touchy subject: Abortion

I view abortion as a conflict of rights between the pregnant woman and the growing fetus.

The woman, obviously, is an adult (or at least a teenager) with full human rights as defined by law. Those rights, if it were up to me, would include the right to decide whether or not she wants to have a baby.

Prior to fertilization there exists an egg and a sperm. They have no rights whatever. Neither does a zygote, or a blastocyst or an embryo. But at about eight weeks, when the basic structure of the body has been established, and we begin to call it a fetus, it’s time to start thinking about granting it some rights, the first of which is the right to be born.

When should that be? When should we take from the woman the right to make decisions about her own body and require her to complete her pregnancy and have the baby?

I vote for about a third of the way through a normal pregnancy, at 12 or 14 weeks. This gives the woman time to verify that she’s pregnant and a couple months to decide what to do. That may be a short time to make such an important decision, but the fetus is growing, and growing quickly. And although it won’t be viable for at least another ten weeks, this is a new human life and I would grant it the right to life earlier rather than later.

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We, as a society, are responsible to care for one another, and that includes caring for babies whose parents are unable or unwilling to do so.

California (other states too, I hope) has a solution – the “safe surrender” law. Just walk into a hospital or fire station and give the baby to any employee. Here’s the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s web page about it.

fire.lacounty.gov/programsevents/SpecialProgramsSafeSurrender.asp

Unfortunately, many distressed new mothers are not thinking clearly, and may not even be aware of this program. We do what we can, even if we know it’s not enough.

I agree completely with this, and would allow abortion much later for such medical conditions. My very brief statement above was addressed to no-questions-asked abortion-on-demand situations, and did not touch on medical issues at all. Perhaps I should stated so specifically.

At what point would you forbid the abortion of a normal healthy fetus, or would you allow abortion right up until labor begins?

I think that viability without medical support is a very late date to forbid abortion. I said above that I would limit abortion (with exceptions for medical issues) to 12 or 14 weeks, but I think I would be comfortable with 20 weeks - half (or more) of a full term pregnancy.

Exactly when is debatable, but at some point society must begin to protect the unborn by forbidding abortion. My vote would go to the early side, after giving the woman a reasonable period of time to decide what she wants to do. But the timetable is very restricted as the fetus becomes more likely to survive every day.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability

"There is no sharp limit of development, age, or weight at which a human fetus automatically becomes viable According to studies between 2003 and 2005, 20 to 35 percent of babies born at 23 weeks of gestation survive, while 50 to 70 percent of babies born at 24 to 25 weeks, and more than 90 percent born at 26 to 27 weeks, survive. It is rare for a baby weighing less than 500g (17.6 ounces) to survive. A baby's chances for survival increases 3-4% per day between 23 and 24 weeks of gestation and about 2-3% per day between 24 and 26 weeks of gestation. After 26 weeks the rate of survival increases at a much slower rate because survival is high already."

I'm in the camp that would respect the anti-abortion folk more if they were also anti-death penalty and were pro taking care of children after they're born. Far too many anti-abortion types could care less about children living in the streets.

Anyway, I don't have an answer. Which means that I prefer to leave it up to the people involved. The one thing I'm certain of is that a "soul" is not inserted into an egg the instant a sperm enters it.

No one knows the exact numbers, but at least 50% and possibly as many as 75% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. Most of the time the woman doesn't even know that she was pregnant. So for every baby born 1 or even 2 were killed by god, right? 8-D

Hi Lily. One thing you can learn from e.g. skeptics is the concept of magical thinking. It varies how it is explained but I will give some examples:
Someone: I am certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.
That can be understood as magical thinking because in one sense it is the certainty in this person which causes the sun to rise. Or if you like i.e. the sentence "The sun will rise tomorrow" makes the sun rise.
Someone: I can prove that you are wrong.
It can be understood as if the proof of being wrong is what causes the person to be wrong or if you like that I think/feel that you are wrong is what makes you wrong.

Magical thinking is related to woo-woo beliefs in that they both go against what we assume about the known laws of physics. For strong external objective ethics/morality it means that for a person or act to be evil there is in the person/act literally something(matter/energy) you can sense through at least one of your five senses. The "trick" in understanding what goes on is to look at the sentence - "I don't like what you did". "I don't like" doesn't happen in "what you did" but takes place in a given brain/mind/soul as an emotional evaluation; just look up perception psychology.

Now back to certainty. As far as I can tell certainty is a state of a given brain/mind/soul and seems to be a part of what is required for somebody to act at least some times in regards to behavior. In the case of you, Fred, the certainty seems to be related to your willingness to claim that there are no souls. This leads to the classic of how to prove a negative. The way I see that one is that you can only prove a negative if you can also prove its "corresponding" positive. I.e. since you can't see a soul(positive); or you can only prove that there are no souls, if you could prove that there are souls.

This leads to you, Bob. It is self-evident that reality is objective. One way to understand this is that the self-evident proof is a state of a brain/mind/soul and in the absurd sense if the proof decides what reality is, then the proof causes reality to be objective. It is a form of magical thinking to think that the self-evident thought can determine/cause what reality is. That you think that reality is objective is not what makes reality what ever it is. Do you understand, Bob? "I can prove that reality is objective" in the absurd sense means that the proof causes/determines what reality is. Apparently it goes the other way - reality causes strong atheists to believe that there is no god and religious people to believe that there is a God. And apparently reality causes/determines you to subjectively think that reality is objective. That is what makes you a non-believing Believer. You are not unique in that, Bob. At least some atheists can't wrap their brains/minds/souls around the divide between rationalism and empiricism. They think that they can decide what reality is as such based on how they think. It is woo-woo and magical thinking, Bob! You can't cause and determine what reality is by thinking! Rather apparently reality causes/determines what you think! In other words you don't have a brain/body, rather the brain/body have you.

So, Fred, here is the problem of physicalism versus something else! If reality is physical, then the first person experience is nothing but the third person observation of how a physical brain works. The problem is that you e.g. can't see as see certainty. You only know that first person! This leads to the problem of knowing and not just believing what reality as reality is. But there is no observable difference between a physicalist/atheist/skeptic and a religious believer. Whether you believe that there is or is no God, both beliefs are a part of whatever reality is and they both appear to be in part a first person reason to act. I.e. they are both world-views and work as world-views. What always happens is that someone reduces them down to A and non-A and declare the one right and the other wrong. But that is an act of thinking in who ever does so and as far as I can't tell it doesn't make the other world-view wrong. It only makes it different.

Hi again Lily. Never ever let the non-believing Believers get the better of you with their insistence on truth, proof, evidence, facts, observable hard data and what ever. It is in some cases a non-believing Belief.
I.e. the problem always end here - e.g. "I only accept observable hard data" is itself not a case of observable hard data, but a belief in them as Believers. It is a part of their world-view, but they believe that it is what reality is independent of their belief. That is what makes them non-believing Believers.

In general it appears that the divide between atheists and religious believer is "artificial", because it requires in one sense for it so stick that there is a way to Decide what reality is. But since I don't believe that I decide what reality is, but rather I believe what ever I believe as Decided by Reality as such and I stand by that, it brings me closer to other believers, which admit that they are believers. In other words I am a believer, though I am an atheist, skeptic and what not