What are feasible arguments for late abortions (6-7 months)? I get there's stuff like bodily autonomy and a child not ready to be raised, I just get kinda sad cuz that's still taking a life (consciousness exists)

This is exactly what I’m talking about. Apparently the rights of a single-celled zygote are now more important than that of a living, breathing woman.
A zygote is basically an embryo that has not yet implanted itself into the uterine wall and it usually consists of one cell or only a few dozen or few hundred cells.

If you’re a woman and you end the life of an embryo that consists of only 5 cells and has not yet even implanted to the uterine wall, they want to make it legal for you to be executed.

Because clearly preserving the life of an organism that doesn’t even know it’s alive yet, might not even grow into a viable human being and consists of just a few cells matters more than protecting the life of a living, breathing woman who knows she is alive and can suffer and feel pain.

There is a rare medical condition called amorphous globosus. It is basically a condition where a woman becomes pregnant, but the zygote instead of developing into a human baby grows into a disorganized blob of tissue with teeth and hair.
Just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean that the thing growing inside you will for a fact always grow into a viable human child.

You could be pregnant and the thing growing inside you might not even be growing into something that resembles what you or I would call a baby.

Or even if it is, the pregnancy could end very early as a miscarriage because something is wrong with the baby.

I understand why abortion is heavily restricted in the second and third trimester when the baby is more developed because the closer you are to the end of your pregnancy, the more clear it is that whatever is growing inside of you will result in the birth of an actual human baby but very early on in the
pregnancy, it is genuinely not guaranteed that whatever is growing inside you will result in the birth of a viable human child.

But when you’re just a few weeks pregnant you genuinely don’t know. The thing growing inside you could literally be a disorganized blob of human tissue and not a baby at all.

15–20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage according to many studies, but if the pregnancy ended very early, before the zygote ever implanted to the uterus, you could have a miscarriage before you ever even knew you were pregnant, which means that the actual percentage of pregnancies that end in miscarriage could be much higher.

I just don’t see how anyone can legitimately expect a 15 or 16 year old girl who just got pregnant in high school to throw away her future over something like this.

The brain of a fruit fly has approximately 100,000 cells. So does an embryo that is around 6 weeks old.
A literal fruit fly has more awareness than a 5-week-old human fetus and they want to make it legal to kill a fully formed, grown adult woman over that.

I have a question for the pro lifers, neonaticide is a unnecessary terrible tragedy and it happens more often than we like. You see on the news women hiding their pregnancies then killing the newborn and discard them like trash. So wouldn't have just been easier to terminate at 8-10 weeks than to carry the child to term and then end its life? With more restrictions to Women's health care this situation right here neonaticide is gonna start happening more and more frequently. So what's your thoughts? These women who commit this terrible crime, obviously do not want a child so, have an abortion or have more of these tragedies happen?

PL, do you believe PC think all people with disabilities should have been aborted and that we support now killing babies after birth?

PC, do you think all PL are women haters who are just looking for an excuse to oppress women, not that they genuinely believe they're trying to save babies?

Do you believe the caricatures of the other side of the debate?

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

This thread is meant for anything related to the abortion debate, like questions or ideas, that are too small to make an entire post about. This is also a great way to gain more insight in the abortion debate if you are new, or unsure about making a whole post.

ADBreakRoom is our officially recognized sister subreddit for all off-topic content and banter you'd like to share with the members of this community. It's a great place to relax and unwind after some intense debating, so go subscribe!

(Sorry for any bad english).

So, I want to hear what people think, not about abortion itself, but more about its methods. I believe there are two major factors about it - safety for mother and the result (consequences, suffering, etc.) for the baby/zef. There are many methods of it for different stages of pregnancy:
- Medical abortion (pills or herbs before if we talk about folk medicine)
- Induction abortion / Early delivery of the baby
- Surgical abortion
- Vacuum aspiration
- Homemade surgical abortion. I name it for possible example waht you can name(or not name) banned / much less preferable.
- ... (not named all i believe)

Also, at different stages of pregnancy, we have different sets of available methods of abortion, so you can name some different sets for them.

So, let's say we have a situation that allows abortion, even in all terms ( don't want this discussion to become a discussion about terms). What methods do you think should be allowed legally and should be banned. If we talk only about allowed, what are more preferable?

For the PC movement, I'm biased, but I would want more activists to push the personhood argument along with the bodily autonomy most do. Even from just a purely strategic level, if the BA argument doesn't move someone from PL or the middle to PC, having more PC repeat it isn't going to do anything. Approaching it from a different angle has a better chance of changing someone's mind. I think an example of what this hyper-focus on BA is objectively correct and there's little to no room for disagreement leads to is the Lila Rose Jubilee episode, where even PC says the activists did not come across well, which I think was the point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ACDhvL2j0

For the PL movement, it would be ejecting religion from it. No more opening your speeches and events with prayers. It's a Catch 22 though where the movement itself would be better for having more secular positions, but the main base is still religious so rejecting them would mean significantly shrinking the people in it. Saying there's a handful of secularists or atheists means absolutely nothing when there are so few and they have almost no influence over the PL movement.

What laws around child endangerment will have to be made if a child is in the womb.

Are women that work dangerous jobs supposed to quit or pause thare work if they work a job that harms a fetus. If so will we as a society be responsible for replaceing her income. For example pest control, industrial cleaning jobs.

Will we be able to charge women that drink or smoke or expose themselves to harmful chemicals during thare pregnancy as abusers and if so will we be able to take the child away from her.

If a women can't afford food will we charge her for child neglect. If the fetus is considered effected by this and what can we do to punish her do doing this.

And can we charge people that deeply stress a woman to the point she has a miscarriage with the death of her child.

And can we charge women from doing anything that harms the fetus.

If someone was subjecting you to a torture in the same degree and duration of pregnancy and birth, we'd intuitively agree that we can kill them to stop them. Why is pregnancy any different?

Before someone says because of intentions: what if someone is cognitively impaired and is doing harm to you, you can still kill them, even though they don't know what they are doing.

Another argument is that, if carrying pregnancy to term will result in death of the women, most rational pro-life will say abortion is allowed. But why? The fetus intentions aren't to kill you. My point is that it just doesn't make sense to refer to intentions when what is being done is seriously bad.

My other big issue with becoming prolife if having abortion is the same thing as running away from accountability. Is it the same thing as child abandonment. Because that is technically not illegal if done properly. But child endangerment is and doing things like drinking and smoking while you're pregnant is directly harming the fetus. The other issue that I have when it comes to this is that if pregnancy is taking accountability of your actions is somebody that was doing everything in their power to prevent pregnancy but still have sex and get pregnant just as guilty as somebody who has sex and does not do any preventative measures. And is forcing accountability on somebody who doesn't want or care enough to even do preventative measures a smart idea because back to my first question drinking and smoking harm the fetus and people that do not care about fetuses or the fetus inside of their body will continue to harm the fetus by drinking and smoking and potentially give birth to the child with a multitude of conditions due to them continuing to do those behaviors. (This is not an saying people with disabilities deserve to be aborted) and they are just as able to continue to keep a child after pregnancy. Should they be able to? And is it the good idea to give the responsibility of pregnancy childbirth and raising a human to somebody who does not care and does not want to do those things?

And along with that are we going to be charging mothers with child endangerment if she is caught smoking or drinking during her pregnancy. Or simply stopping her ability for purchasing these items or is that taking away her right to enjoy those options.

TLDR: Historically abortion has been defended by (2) main arguments. (1) As Judith Jarvis Thomson has defended, a right to life does not entail the right to use one’s body without their consent. David Boonin has expanded on this more in his book A Defense of Abortion.
(2) Pro-choice philosophers like Mary Anne Warren and Jeff McMahan have argued abortion is not wrong because abortion does not involve the killing of a person which is morally valuable.
Both (1–2) are great arguments but there is a less talked about argument which for me has been the most influential. (3) The personal identity argument.
What this argument consists of is the idea that abortion up to 20–24 weeks is permissible since we did not exist as a fetus prior to 20–24 weeks because we are psychological beings, not mere organisms. Since every pro-life argument presumes we are organisms in order for personhood to be established or for the fetus to be identical to a later person, and we aren’t organisms, these arguments fail.

Note: It need not be necessary for me to defend a specific ontology or view of personal identity. That is intentionally left vague. Merely showing the biological view of identity is false is sufficient in rebutting mostly every secular pro lifer view on identity.

Personal Identity Vs Personhood

At first glance these two may seem very similar; however, they answer two different questions.

**Personhood —**seeks to ask why an individual has moral status or is a subject of moral consideration.

**Personal identity —**seeks to answer the question of what makes you the same individual over time despite changes. Typically this is meant in a numerical context in the sense that "you" had your fifth birthday party and this was "you" in a direct, literal sense.

These two concepts answer different questions and thus are applied and used within philosophy differently. For example, we may ask what makes a mouse the same mouse over time. On the contrary, we may ask what makes the mouse a non-person that doesn’t deserve human rights. Even if we answered the question of why the mouse is the same mouse over time, this wouldn’t automatically imply the mouse is or is not a person. Identity does not imply personhood; it simply attempts to track an individual diachronically.
And this can be applied to abortion too.

Pro lifers Silent Reliance On Biological Identity

Pro-life philosophers tend to use the substance view argument in favor of fetal personhood. Francis Beckwith states:

“According to this view, a human being is intrinsically valuable because of the sort of thing it is and the human being remains that sort of thing as long as it exists. What sort of thing is it? The human being is a particular type of substance—a rational moral agent—that remains identical to itself as long as it exists, even if it is not presently exhibiting the functions, behaving in ways, or currently able to immediately exercise these actions that we typically attribute to active and mature rational moral agents. It is, in my judgment, the best account of human personhood.”

We can agree a person is an individual with a rational nature. However, the subject with the rational nature is not merely the human organism like Beckwith has identified. It is me. Beckwith and other pro-life philosophers like Christopher Kaczor and Patrick Lee may be correct (for the sake of discussion) that a person is an individual substance with a rational nature, and that substance is essentially a person. However, where they identify that substance as an organism, psychological theorists identify it as some other fact of the matter, not the organism.
While Beckwith and friends may be correct that "I am essentially a rational person," they mistakenly presume with little argumentation that I am an organism rather than some psychological fact of the matter.
This is interesting given that psychological views of identity are the dominant view in philosophy.

This is also true of any potentiality argument, most famously the Future Like Ours argument. These arguments assume the early fetus has a future connected to an experiencing adult in the first place. The assumption that the fetus even has a future assumes it is numerically the same being which will experience that future. However, if what we are is psychological relations or some psychological fact of the matter, and this is not present prior to 20–24 weeks, then I could not have been identical to a fetus prior to 20–24 weeks because I would not yet have existed.

In Patrick Lee's argument from substantial identity, he argues:

“1. You and I are intrinsically valuable (in the sense that makes us subjects of rights).2. We are intrinsically valuable because of what we are (what we are essentially).3. What we are, is each a human, physical organism.4. Human physical organisms come to be at conception. (A biological proposition: a new and distinct human organism is generated by the fusion of a spermatozoon and an oocyte.) 4 5. Therefore, what is intrinsically valuable (as a subject of rights) comes to be at conception”

This syllogism may seem intuitive at first glance, but premise (3) is doing a tremendous amount of work. There is an assumption that what we are is a human physical organism, but as mentioned earlier, this is a controversial minority position among philosophers.
His principal defense of premise (3) only consist of a swift response to Michael Tooley where he writes:

“a living thing that pertorms bodıly actions is an organısm, a bodily entity. But it is clear in the case of the human individual that it is the same subject that per-ceives, walks and talks (which are bodily actions), and that under-stands and makes choices (what everyone, including anyone who denies he is an organism, refers to as 'I'). It must be the same thing that perceives these words on a page, for example, and understands them. Thus, what each of us refers to as 'I' is identi-cally the physical organism which is the subject both of bodily actions such as perceiving and walking, and of non-physical actions, such as understanding and choosing. Therefore, you and I are essentially physical organisms, rather than consciousnesses.”

One interesting thing to note is that it is more specifically the brain and eyes which perceive, the legs which walk, the mouth which talks, and the brain which is responsible for thinking. It is actually pretty hard to find an example of the organism as a distinct ontological substance having independent causal influence over its parts. Mostly everything the organism is said to be doing can be identified and attributed to its lower-level microphysical parts.
A simple mirror argument to Lee consists of the following…
I think, I remember, and since these processes all have something to do with my brain and psychology, then my existence, survival, or identity must have something to do with these processes too. It is harder to say I am an organism since organisms are only said to walk, talk, think, or remember in virtue of their microphysical parts. They do not directly walk or talk; it is only in virtue of their constituent parts that they are said to perform these actions.
Recently, Eric Vogelstein and Bruce Blackshaw have argued that FLO and potentiality arguments are compatible with psychological views of identity. However, this is not without a catch, as they argue a fetus has a Future Like Ours derivatively through the future thinking mind, so the assumption is that having a biological property derivatively is morally similar to having it directly.

Against The Biological View(1)

The most common example against biological views of identity is the brain transplant thought experiment. Dustin Crummett gives an example inspired from Jeff McMahan:

“Suppose your brain is healthy but your body is dying, while your twin is in a permanent vegetative state but has a healthy body. Doctors decide they will save you in the following way. You lay down on Operating Table A, and your twin is laid on Operating Table B. They remove the part of your brain responsible for your mental life. We can suppose this is your cerebrum, the top part of your brain. They leave your lower brain intact. The lower brain is what regulates your vital functions, so your old body stays alive. They then transplant your cerebrum into your twin’s body. Your mind, along with your first-person perspective, memories, personality, etc. goes along with your cerebrum, and someone with all these things wakes up in your twin’s body. Almost everyone is inclined to think you went with your mind over to Table B. But this is incompatible with animalism, since your organism did not go with your mind over to Table B. If your organism had gone with your cerebrum, then while your cerebrum was being transplanted from one body to another, the entire organism would have consisted of nothing but your detached cerebrum. But a detached cerebrum is not an organism: it does not meet the scientific criteria for being an organism (maintaining homeostasis, etc.) any more than a severed hand does. And further, keep in mind that there is still a living, comatose human organism on Table A. Presumably you did not create a new human organism when you removed the cerebrum, so that must be the same human organism that laid down on Table A to begin with, i.e., your organism. But if your organism is still on Table A, it cannot have gone with your cerebrum over to Table B.”

This hypothetical is powerful because it illustrates that we have a strong intuition that our existence or survival has to do with some part of our brain rather than our organism.
Some defenders of the biological view, such as Alexander Pruss, Eric Olson, and Peter van Inwagen, have argued that the organism can be pared down to the brain, or more specifically the brainstem, because the brainstem integrates bodily processes and regulates the rest of the body.
Pruss writes:

“Now if the controlling part is no longer there, then it is difficult to attribute to the
organism any of the strivings of the controlled parts. If a heart is stimulated so that it keeps on beating after being disconnected from an animal, its beating is no longer a part of the organism's striving for oxygenating the internal organs. However, if there is no longer a functional organic heart but the lower brain continues to send signals that control the heart rate, then it makes sense to say that the organism continues to strive to oxygenate the internal organs, even if this striving will be unsuccessful. Thus if the controlled parts are replaced by prostheses but the controlling part remains functional, it appears possible to attribute the striving for performance of life functions to the organism.”

One interesting point is that it makes little sense to say in the reduction case or brain transplant case that the organism becomes reduced to the brain since the brainstem itself does not satisfy the biological criteria for being an organism.
If an organism is reducible to a brain, then what is the relationship between the brain and the organism?
A more startling and sever critique is something I have challenged pro lifers on before in other posts. If an organism is reducible to a brain, then what is the relationship between the brain and organism?
If the brainstem is what regulates the animal's life processes and controls the major functioning systems of the organism, then what does the organism do that cannot already be accounted for by the brain?
If the reply is that the organism uses the brain to regulate itself, there is a clear epistemic problem here. Why can't the brain just use the organism to regulate itself too! How do we know which thing is using the other to regulate and sustain themself? If the organism can use the brain, we would expect the organism to actually interact with its parts and the brain. But it's not clear the organism can actually interact with the brain to use the brain itself. The organism may be said to feed the eyes visual inputs which is interpreted into a picture we see. But that can be attributed to parts of the organism working not the organism itself. Or when I touch my foot that's not the organism interacting with my foot it's my hand interacting with my foot and my brain telling my hand to do so. If the organism cannot even interact with my brain or any parts then it's hard to explain what the organism does that cannot be accounted for by the brain. It's also hard to give an account of the organism using the brain since the organism would seem to be causally inert and we don't have any good reasons to think the organism can actually interact with lower level systems.

The biological view even runs into similar problems Bakers Constitution view runs into. If we reduce an organism to a brain in a vat or a brain that is artificially kept alive by machinery which seems metaphysically possible the animalist will either have to say I exist as a brain or some point in the reduction process I cease to exist. If they think that if you slowly destroy an organisms parts that at some point the organism will go out of existence yet they cannot identify this point then this makes identity indeterminate. But identity under biological substance metaphysics pro lifers like Beckwith, Lee and Kaczor utilize identity necessarily has to be determinate if the organism exists as the same object through time.I know when I exist or don’t exist. It isn’t vague, it is sharp. However, if they think I can survive a brain transplant because my organism is reducible to a brain, or cannot pick a non arbitrary point in which my bodily reduction leads to my death, then they should agree I can survive as a brain in a vat. However, I think this suffers from the problem of Indiscernibility.

Per Eric olson(the dominant figure behind the biological view).

“*How can putting the same parts together in the same way in the same circumstances give you qualitatively different wholes? If the same atoms can compose two things at once, what could make those two things qualitatively different?* What could give them different mental properties, or different persistence conditions, or different modal properties? If atoms really could compose more than one object at once—if numerically different objects could coincide materially— should we not expect” those objects to be qualitatively identical?”

In other words, how can the organism be reducible to a brain in extreme circumstances. Or we can impair an organism by removing parts until just the brain is present. But in the case just a brain is present and we are told an organism is present the brain and organism are qualitatively identical in that they share every atom. How are we suppose to think the atoms that compose the brain or brainstem also compose another distinct being… the organism? How can we tell the difference between the organism in this case and the brainstem?

Against The Biological View(2)

Some defenders of the biological view will instead accept that if your brain is transplanted, you do not go with your brain. I think this is highly counterintuitive, but if so, I have a more detailed objection.
Pro-lifers often endorse substance metaphysics where an organism is considered a substance not reducible to its parts. Francis Beckwith writes:

“Another way to put it is to say that organisms, including human beings, are ontologically prior to their parts (Moreland in Moreland & Rae, 2000,* p. 206), which means that the organism as a whole maintains absolute identity through time while it grows, develops, and undergoes numerous changes, largely as a result of the organism's nature that directs and informs these changes and their limits. The organs and parts of the organism, and their role in actualizing the intrinsic, basic capacities of the whole, acquire their purpose and function because of their roles in maintaining, sustaining, and perfecting the being as a whole. This is in contrast to a thing that is not ontologically prior to its parts, like an auto-mobile, cruise ship, or computer. Just as a sporting event (e.g., a basketball game, the British Open) does not subsist through time as a unified whole, an automobile, ship, or computer does not as well (Moreland & Rae, 2000, p. 178). It is, rather, in the words of Moreland, "a sum of each temporal (and spatial) part ..." Called mereological essentialism (from the Greek "meros" for "part")”

However, we should be skeptical that we are substances like organisms which maintain absolute identity across time. For one, it is unclear how the organism exists in such an ontologically superior fashion from its parts. How does the organism maintain its absolute identity throughout various changes? If it is because of its unified nature how is it possible this nature it possesses is numerically identical over time, if every second the organisms atoms and all of its parts are being rearrranged and replaced? This “nature” or “unifying” cannot be a material thing apart of the organism since everything in the organism is always changing. It makes no sense to claim numerical identity between an organism at t1 and t2, when the organism at t1 and t2 are qualitatively distinct. More importantly, all of the organisms powers and causal influence it exerts only exists because it is composed and defined as the unification and self regulation/self integration of its parts In other words, the organism is made up of and consists of parts, yet we are told the organism isn’t reducible to its parts. But if it isn’t reducible to its parts where does it gain the energy and causal power to exist as an ontologically separate object? If the organism exists as object O, yet it is composed of X and Y, we should expect O to be reducible to X and Y, since those are the things that compose it! Suggesting otherwise would seem to break causal closure and introduce something non material. Finally, if object O(the organism) is composed by objects like X and Y in a self regulating and interconnected fashion, then everything the organism does can be said to also have been done by objects like X and Y. In fact, it makes more sense to say objects X and Y preform causal efficiency than object O(the organism) since object X and Y directly cause an event whereas object O derivatively causes an event in virtue of X and Y. Object O only inherits causal power from objects X and Y, it does not directly or inherently have causal power on its own. If this is formulation is even somewhat true we can apply it to personal identity. We are causally efficient and effective beings who exert causal influence over everyday objects directly. Organisms do not exert causal influence over objects directly since everything they are said to do can already be accounted by from their microphysical parts. They only inherit causal power in a derivate sense. Therefore, whatever we are, we are not organisms.

Derivate Pro Lifer Defense

Some pro-lifers will concede that we are fundamentally minds but argue that organisms possess every morally relevant property of minds derivatively.
For example, they may argue that fetuses possess a derivative Future Like Ours.
A quick rebuttal comes from the brain transplant cases.
If your brain were transplanted into another body, no one would mourn that the brainless body had been deprived of a Future Like Ours because the psychologically continuous future would still exist.
The morally relevant future is the future to which the person is psychologically connected.

Conclusion

I have tried to show that nearly every account of fetal personhood assumes that we are organisms. If that assumption is false, then many pro-life arguments fail at their first step.
I have argued this primarily through brain transplant cases and an argument inspired by Trenton Merricks' overdetermination argument.
What I have not attempted to do is deny what makes someone morally valuable. Rather, I have argued that prior to approximately 20–24 weeks there is no "someone" to whom those moral predicates apply.
Finally, I suspect many pro-choice readers will be disappointed that I have not defended abortion through bodily autonomy. In my experience, however, the personal identity argument has been more persuasive both to me and to many of my interlocutors. Bodily autonomy is an important and powerful argument, but I think it is also worth recognizing that we need not grant the pro-life assumption that the fetus is numerically identical to the later person.
I hope you enjoyed the post.

Finial note: I posted the same post prior to this but it was removed to my belief because of the amount of links I used to reference books, papers, and quotes. If you require or want a link to anything in my post let me know and I will be happy to provide!

I am still on the fence about banning abortion because what is the plan for After like Women can still do a multitude of other things that can end a pregnancy, and I think we need to talk about where the line actually to stop her actions is placed.

For instance, a woman can use herbs that can result in an abortion is this something we should stop? If so, are we going to ban women from drinking chamomile tea or interacting with certain herbs.

Women can still travel out of the country to get an abortion. Are we going to ban women from leaving the country? A woman could take a pregnancy test, hide the fact that she's pregnant, and cross the border get an abortion in another country and come back. So are we going to require women to take a pregnancy test before they're allowed to leave the country? Are we going to track what she does outside our borders? Are we going to test her before and after her trip and if she's no longer pregnant, are we going to punish her? How would we even determine whether she had a natural miscarriage or not?

Are we going to monitor her and the people in her life to make sure none of them are accessing anything that could "harm" the fetus like thare mail or country's they travel to that they could get abortion medication from. Or thare day yo day life like if they get the medication from a back ally drug deal.

we all remember the storys of coat hanger abortions that are still an option (an incredibly dangerous one). How are we going to stop women from resorting to that and harming themselves? Like 24/7 watching her or just wait till she had a miscarriage and seeing if she seems guilty.

Are we going to control what she eats, to make sure her diet can't cause a miscarriage? Are we going to control what activities she can do like whether she's allowed to ride a roller coaster, since they can also cause miscarriages? Are we going to make sure she doesn't get herself sick on purpose during pregnancy, since most forms of food poisoning can also cause a miscarriage? Or simply loses a significant amount of weight.

And on top of all of thisare we going to provide pregnancy-related mental health support? Because in other countries, women have taken their own lives because they were pregnant and didn't want to be. That's a real possibility here too, and it worries me.

And I am most worried about a women being falsely accused of killing her child when she didn't do anything wrong. How will we know who had an abortion and who didn't.

So I'm going into full detail here. Probably obvious but I'll state straight away I am pro choice, I believe that a fetus does not have emotions, feelings or is able to feel pain and is not the same as a birthed baby.

late-term abortion is another topic. I'm talking about within the first 1-2 months, first stages/immediately after finding out.

Clarifications out of the way, I'll explain. I live in the UK, I'm very lucky and grateful to have such easy access to free medical care, including abortions. Obviously I understand the stress that comes from costs/illegality.

I recently found out I'm pregnant, and I plan to get an abortion. For me it is genuinely a shrug of the shoulder moment, I have been through it once more and yes it was painful, but not more so than my regular period. Because it was early I was able to take pills and go through the procedure at home.

Am I missing something critical??? In movies and in real life people are so upset. I told my mum what happened afterwards and she was so upset about it. I'm being 100% serious when I say I don't understand.

Please don't bring God into this, or anything religious. I'm looking for factual reasons why it *is* such a big deal, if there are any. I apologise if I'm being insensitive and of course I understand why it can be a sensitive topic, I'm just being as factual as possible

https://youtube.com/shorts/TPYK2EwIxsM?si=6TC3k6OOWSH0zRHO

In this shorts video, which from what I can understand, features a short back and forth, timed discussion about Abortion, with one person being pro-life (this man) and the other pro-choice (this woman)

The man in the shorts video agreed to the following statement, proposed by the pro-choice woman:

'If my 10 year old daughter was raped and she was going to conceive a baby that would survive, I would not proceed with the abortion'

Naturally, the woman, after some time, told the man firmly "I hope that your daughter lives a very happy life and gets away from you"

The agreement to the aforementioned statement obviously left me in shock, I went to check the comments. Most of them are ridiculing the woman for her tone of voice, her choice of words. What baffles me the most is that no one was questioning the morality of the man's stance.

So I ask myself and to the readers:

If you were his daughter, and gave birth to a baby 'that' way because of your father's choice, and later in life were to find out, would you not resent the father? Or would you praise him?

I think the specifics of how the baby is raised would matter a lot. Who takes care of it? The baby, will it know who his mom is? Will it know who its father is? What do we do about the trauma the one giving birth faces?

I think I need a reality check, please feel free to engage.

Once again, was in a heated "debate" (not sure it was very productive in advancing any conversation) and we were hit with the "what's the difference between a 2 day embryo and a 9 month fetus, and why would we also not be allowed to then take a [graphic tool] to the child as they are being delivered via the birth canal."

This is obviously absurd to me but I do want to ask PRO-CHOICE ONLY: How do you personally consider different developments and why? And how does that help or hinder you when speaking to prolife? I find it difficult to discuss things that do not have clear "definitions" because my own explanations ramble.

Personally im for all 9 months no because I want some gruesome end to a baby but because I've been told that late term induction is needed during serious conditions.

During my time debating abortion, I have found it incredibly difficult to find common ground. The debate often gets stuck on defining words. Even simple concepts like “killing” and “rights” get muddled when having this discussion. This is because, I think, we have shockingly different understandings of these words and take for granted that others must think like us.

This is decidedly not the case. 

Take the word “killing”. My previous post assumed a definition of killing oriented around how directly your causal contributions were to the resulting death. While at the time this approach seemed appropriate, it later occurred to me that assuming this definition only addressed a single moral parameter that might define killing. However, even among philosophers, simply defining what counts as “killing” as opposed to “letting die” requires a fair amount of clarification.

Even more complex is the morality of killing. To quote Jeff McMahan, “there is no single, unitary explanation of the wrongness of killing.” In truth, the moral permissibility of killing is determined by a set of interacting variables, such as:

• Causation: How directly did the person cause the death? Was it direct or indirect?
• Intention: Did the person who caused the death intend for that outcome?
• Responsibility: Did the person who caused the death have a responsibility to act to preserve life or to not act to end it? Was the person in some way responsible for the deceased's situation in the first place?
• Rights Justification: Did the person who died have a right that was violated by their death?
• Normative Justification: Was it morally permissible to cause the death of the individual?
• Prior Trajectory: Was the person who died already on a negative health trajectory prior to your involvement, or was your act the beginning of their negative health outcome?
• Power Dynamics: Does one party have disproportionate power to dictate terms?
• Alternatives: Did you have the ability to act reasonably in a way that would have avoided death?

Given that there is no single element of an act that we use to define “killing”, nor is there a single element by which we morally judge killing, it may be more useful to talk about the moral variables involved rather than appealing to a contested definition.

While I want to try and go through these variables one at a time in a future post, I'd like to dedicate this post on a single variable: prior trajectory. I've seen PLers argue that for situations like Thompson's Violinist, it is morally relevant that the Violinist was vulnerable (or on a "negative health trajectory") prior to your being connected. I'd like to know why.

Per my view, the Violinist argument doesn’t change conclusions if we talk about the Violinist as someone whose trajectory was a healthy one prior to your involvement. If you woke up connected to someone that is otherwise healthy but disconnecting would cause a shock to his system such that it would kill him, I don’t think that creates a substantive difference in the conclusion. I still think you are morally permitted to disconnect.  

So, that's my line of questioning for this post: What makes a pathological dependence morally less obligatory than a “healthy” one? This assumes natural biological states generate stronger obligations than pathological ones. This strikes me as a kind of teleological argument. Why is trajectory or nature morally relevant to the discussion?

https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/couple-sues-surrogate-who-refused-to-abort-their-baby-over-a-minor-birth-defect/

Summary: couple used a surrogate, and the fetus/child developed a cleft lip and heart defect. They wanted to abort, and eventually they sued her.

Reading PL comments on the issue: surrogacy should be banned as it "commodifies" children, is unnatural, and playing God. They really emphasize its a SAME SEX couple when its completely irrelevant, other than to demonize LGBT people, which is why this is all over Christian outlets. Also, they claim PC are evil monsters who abort for simple cosmetic reasons and don't actually respect women's choices.

Let's see if that's true or they're lying. I expect the latter at this point.

>According to the suit, filed in Ontario Superior Court in May and obtained by the National Post, the parents claim the surrogate didn’t adequately keep them informed about the baby’s health, put the child at risk, violated confidentiality and caused them emotional distress.

So breach of contract.

>Unlike the US, where pay for surrogate mothers can exceed $100,000, Canadian surrogates are only reimbursed for receipted expenses they incur in bringing the pregnancy to term.

That "commodifies children" doesn't even hold up here, unless they consider basic reimbursement it.

>She ultimately decided on the same-sex couple and had in-vitro fertilization using embryos from a donor egg and both of their sperm.

I imagine PL also oppose IVF here. Not enough to protest one of those clinics over a random woman walking into PP for non-abortive reasons.

>"Considering that medical tests indicate that the fetus has, or is likely to have, a genetic, chromosomal or other abnormality or defect, and in accordance with article 8.5 (a) of our surrogacy agreement … we want to inform you of our wish that the pregnancy be terminated,” the missive read.

>“Although very difficult, this decision is free and informed.”

I assume she knew this beforehand

>The parents agreed to proceed with the pregnancy after doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital said the baby was generally healthy and had no major problems beyond the cleft lip.

They then went through with it

>But tensions flared again between the surrogate and the parents when she insisted on a home birth performed by midwives rather than in a hospital, as the parents requested due to the cleft lip.

Sounds like she shouldn't have done surrogacy if she didn't want to respect the parents wishes.

>“The question arises as to whether it is in the best interests of the child to be raised by these people.”

And it ends with a statement of implicit support in taking the child away from some professor.

What is your opinion on the couple suing their surrogate who refused to abort?

I'm wondering, if we did not factor in those who consider their opinion as based primarily in religious reasons, approximately what the % of people who are pro-life vs pro-choice might look like.

Of course, this is hard to definitively measure for various reasons, but I was curious if anyone had any theoretical or empirical insight on the extent to which religion plays a factor in this debate.

Whenever it comes to the topic of abortion, I hear many people consistently debate about the legality and morality of abortion because it is something that can people touch upon from a personal level, but I rarely hear many people talk about the economic implications that come with the concept of abortion. I think the reason why many people aren't interested in the economic conversation of abortion is because of the complexity that comes with the topic of economics along with the second-order economic effects that would arise from the policies of abortion. My position on abortion has never felt truly grounded, and I felt that it would be important to share some of the thoughts I had about the economic implications of abortion policies.

Let's assume that we are looking into the macroeconomic and the microeconomic implications of abortion. If we are looking at abortion on the macroeconomic level, there would be assumptions that the increased amount of abortions could ultimately lead to less workers being available for jobs in the economy, which could potentially affect the amount of tax revenue needed to fund social programs that are provided by the government, potentially lead to less competition from businesses in the market, and potentially have a negative effect on land value due to decreased desirability for the natural resource.

These are some specific examples I came up with the argument against the increased amount of abortions, but there is also plausibility that comes with the argument for the increased amount of abortions. If there is more abortions, there could potentially be more money available for individuals to use for spending on consumer goods, there could be less spending needed to fund certain social programs, which could help reduce the deficit, and it could potentially help decrease prices for certain things that are low on supply.

With both of these hypothetical scenarios being applied in an economic context, it helps make the economics of abortion a bit more clearer for the average individual that may not be directly interested in the concept of economics.

With the moral justifications for and against abortion, it could affect how the policies on abortion are decided on a national or a state level, and the economy will be affected by the implementation of those policies. However, morality may not always be the same as the legality of the procedure itself, and there would be other human incentives to have or to not have an abortion that go beyond logical consistency. With those human incentives that exist, this is where economics could inherit a quintessential role in the abortion debate.

Let's go back to the assumption board here. If someone was arguing for the pro-choice perspective of legality on abortion, they could argue that the legalization of abortion could allow women to save money for costs like rent, utilities, food, clothing etc., they could argue that legalization of abortion would let law enforcement focus on violent crimes that could cause economic burdens for private property owners, and they could argue that legalization of abortion could help increase jobs for the unemployed as there could be less demand for labor.

Conversely, if someone was arguing for the pro-life perspective of legality on abortion, they could argue that the criminalization of abortion would help control inflation as there could presumably be more tax revenue to alleviate the effects of a deficit, they could argue that criminalization of abortion would incentivize people to build more housing supply to decrease rents as a way to help families care for newborns, and they could argue that criminalization of abortion could incentivize production for certain products to help plan their family, which can allow for investment to proliferate in those industries.

There are probably a lot of economic scenarios that I haven't listed that could also be impacted by how abortion is seen legally and morally, but I think that these are examples that are decent enough to think about whenever approaching the debate. If you do plan on sharing your perspective about the economic implications of abortion, it would be nice to see some empirical evidence and other hypothetical scenarios to further engage the insight about this complex political issue.

If a person becomes pregnant, and wants to have an abortion but is not allowed to, the pregnancy will result in a baby that later turns into an an adult. What do these adults think about abortion?

The abortion ban in parts of the US is, of course, too recent for any such people to have a say in the matter. But there have been abortion bans in other places for much longer than that.

Are you alive due to an abortion ban?

Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

If you are pro-choice, do you make an exception for the pregnancy that created you? Or do you support your mother's right to autonomy so much that you would have preferred if you were never born?

I have literally never heard the opinion of these people in the pro-life/pro-choice debate. And I think it would be very interesting to hear.

Most prolifers support abortion in cases where the pregnancy threatens the life of the pregnant person. This exception is usually presented as so basic and obvious that there's no need for any further explanation: of course we should save the mother's life. That's an easy, simple answer. But it conceals a much more complicated reality, so I'd really like some clarification.

What is a "life threat"?

Do you have specific scenarios in mind (eg; ectopic pregnancy, sepsis, eclampsia)? Or is it more of a statistical thing (eg; the pregnant person will die in the next hour unless the baby is killed)? If so, what do you think the certainty should be? 100% chance of death? 50%? 10%? What about the time frame? Does death have to be imminent, or just inevitable? Please clarify how you determine whether or not a given situation is life threatening enough to justify killing an innocent child.

How can that definition be practically applied in real life situations?

Now that you've clarified what a life threat is, how can your definition be practically applied in the real world? Do you think laws should include a list of actual conditions or situations? Or are the phrases "life threat" and "life saving" sufficient for doctors and hospitals to make the right decisions? Should doctors be expected to make their own diagnoses, or should multiple doctors have to sign off? Do you think existing laws are sufficiently clear about which situations allow emergency abortion? What do you think about the doctors who have complained that the existing laws aren't clear enough?

Why is that the line?

Allowing for abortion in certain cases puts a pretty big dent in the argument that it's never permissible to kill an innocent child. This exception shows that it is sometimes permissible to kill an innocent child. So why draw the line at the pregnant person's life? Are there no limits to the amount of pain and suffering the pregnant person is expected to endure for the innocent child's benefit, as long as the pregnancy doesn't actually kill them? Why is the life of that child considered more important than the health, safety, well being, happiness, medical autonomy, and bodily integrity of the pregnant person? Are there any other circumstances where a person is legally obligated to compromise their health, safety, well being, happiness, medical autonomy, and bodily integrity for the life of another person?

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

This thread is meant for anything related to the abortion debate, like questions or ideas, that are too small to make an entire post about. This is also a great way to gain more insight in the abortion debate if you are new, or unsure about making a whole post.

ADBreakRoom is our officially recognized sister subreddit for all off-topic content and banter you'd like to share with the members of this community. It's a great place to relax and unwind after some intense debating, so go subscribe!

When someone kills a pregnant woman why do you think it’s a double homicide instead of single no matter the stage of the pregnancy?