[RD] Abortion, once again

[Samson]

we usually distinguish "rights" from "rules that only count for some people" as separate categories.

That means there are not any in the real world then.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That means there are not any in the real world then.

not with that attitude there isn't.

and i only say that half in jest. the constitution is a piece of paper. the extent to which it, or any other legal document, is more than a piece of paper depends on human action. it's a right if we consistently enforce it as one.

note that if one rejects the notion of rights outright, it becomes difficult to argue against pretty much anything being done or prevented (including abortions), and could arbitrarily allow or deny them to people without any justification.

i prefer a government that takes rights as seriously as possible, rather than one where if it feels like it you can just be thrown into an oubliette or something. i'd rather live in a world where we uphold them. and that does mean defining that one person's liberty stops when it means taking away the liberty of others.

the question wrt abortion law is if/when that "other" exists at all (legally).

 

[Senethro]

(I don't know that fetal personhood is that big a deal, given that we don't allow one individuals personhood to override another in other situations)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

(I don't know that fetal personhood is that big a deal, given that we don't allow one individuals personhood to override another in other situations)

i'm not familiar with many cases where a human being is denied personhood outright for legal purposes, and when it happens it's often considered some form of atrocity. sometimes one person gets rights or just desires prioritized over others, whether that's appropriate or not depends on context.

 

[Samson]

i'm not familiar with many cases where a human being is denied personhood outright for legal purposes, and when it happens it's often considered some form of atrocity. sometimes one person gets rights or just desires prioritized over others, whether that's appropriate or not depends on context.

This is the point. We are quite willing to give and take rights independent of "personhood", so it never is any absolute question of personhood but what rights are appropriate in what situation.

 

[Senethro]

I mean, dead potential organ donors' bodily autonomy is set higher than living humans personhood. The hypothetical violinist etc.

Even if fetal personhood were objectively established, when would it override that of the mother's?

 

[MaryKB]

I mean, dead potential organ donors' bodily autonomy is set higher than living humans personhood. The hypothetical violinist etc.

Even if fetal personhood were objectively established, when would it override that of the mother's?

Many people do not view the mother as a human being, just an incubator.

 

[El_Machinae]

it is not special at all unless you consider fetal personhood. it is no more a question of rights than basic trauma surgery or routine testing without that. i don't want to get into the weeds of insurance and covered procedure stuff, that's outside thread scope.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. In Canada, rights aren't triggered until birth. At that point, there is some 'going back in time' to adjudicate things that aren't decided until the triggering of that right, but these aren't completely inconsistent. We will often change the legal consequences of early behavior based on the actual outcome.

that would imply inconsistency, though. "shrodinger's personhood" is objectively broken law. but i'll just chalk this up to the actual rules being unclear, since you don't seem sure yourself and think it's broadly assault alone, which is consistent.

No, it's assault on the mother if you attack the mother and kill the fetus (in Canada). That part is consistent. The edge case is when damaging the mother causes the homicide of the delivered baby. It's easy if it's an external actor. Obviously it gets weirder if there are fewer parties. My suspicion is the vagueness here is intentional, since helping mothers will butt up against restricting their behaviour, in the practical sense.

if that were true this would not be a controversial topic with dozens of pages here and years of heavy discussion/strong emotions behind it.

Yes, there are strong emotions. But, a reasonable portion of that will be due to false beliefs. AND, another reasonable portion will be because of the noise of people who actually don't care about any talk of personhood that doesn't include timepoint zero. AND a cohort that doesn't value maternal care enough. In Canada, where healthcare is a right and where abortion is healthcare, proper maternal care matters more with regards to any potential atrocities than a further clarification of the law would.

There's a lack of codification (to some people's standards) but there are a variety of consensus positions that have pretty strong overlap. Better maternal care is going to prevent the creation of arenas where those people disagree.

(I don't know that fetal personhood is that big a deal, given that we don't allow one individuals personhood to override another in other situations)

This sentence might be a bit too efficient. What do you mean?
edit: what is 'overriding personhood'?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

so it never is any absolute question of personhood but what rights are appropriate in what situation.

personhood tends to require extreme circumstances to merit killing the person. usually self defense, or states that allow it as punishment for homicide.

i don't have any patience for states that outlaw abortion in the contexts where "self-defense" is relevant, though, and i don't think anybody else here is advocating against abortions in those cases, even though we know some people are willing to go that far. i don't think i've seen it in this thread though.

Even if fetal personhood were objectively established, when would it override that of the mother's?

that's a half question. at least in principle, it should depend on the tradeoffs in context.

only half though, because it's the bodily autonomy of the mother in question, not the personhood. unless you're advocating that rights shouldn't consistently be a thing like we saw earlier in this thread i guess.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. In Canada, rights aren't triggered until birth. At that point, there is some 'going back in time' to adjudicate things that aren't decided until the triggering of that right, but these aren't completely inconsistent. We will often change the legal consequences of early behavior based on the actual outcome.

we do, but i'm not entirely convinced we *should*. dui comes to mind. vehicular manslaughter vs liable for civil damages vs suspended license only, based on luck doesn't sit right with me. same for stabbing someone with a knife with intent to kill and failing. the motives and actions in question are identical. i admit this is a tougher question than it seems on its face though.

Yes, there are strong emotions. But, a reasonable portion of that will be due to false beliefs. AND, another reasonable portion will be because of the noise of people who actually don't care about any talk of personhood that doesn't include timepoint zero.

if that's the stance why stop at 0 or set the 0 point arbitrarily though :/.

proper maternal care matters more with regards to any potential atrocities than a further clarification of the law would.

i wonder about that, but it's not easy to argue either side of it without deviating pretty far from abortion as the topic.

 

[Arwon]

(I don't know that fetal personhood is that big a deal, given that we don't allow one individuals personhood to override another in other situations)

It isn't, it's just something anti-abortion Christians in the US made up to repackage traditional misogyny in a fun new container.

 

[Kyriakos]

Imo it is far worse to think that the child belongs to you, after he/she is born.

 

[El_Machinae]

if that's the stance why stop at 0 or set the 0 point arbitrarily though :/.

Catholics go before zero or (better phrased) some Catholics think they do.

Honestly, I get the time = zero heuristic. When people backtrack the biology from when a person first became a unique organism, the timepoint at which the two unique organisms merged to become one makes some kind of sense. I don't hold that heuristic, but I remember when I did. I think a lot is built post-hoc off of that conception of, um, conception.

I mean, we're a species that has argued about how much of the sky can belong to someone. We're weird.

 

[Arwon]

Clearly, identical twins share a soul and personhood because life begins at conception. The hard part is figuring out which twin isn't a person when they're all grown up.

 

[El_Machinae]

Shush. As a chimera who wants more voting power, I need you to be quiet about that for one more courtcase.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

i note the handwaving of personhood again here. again.

You note only your interpretation.

rights don't only count sometimes. once you codify rights, you have them or you don't.

if you say i don't, don't expect me to agree that you do.

Given that you are neither Canadian nor someone who is capable of getting pregnant, I don't see why your side trip into vaccine mandates is relevant.

Honestly, there is NO comparison between the two that makes any sense especially when you consider that the vast majority of the "my body, my choice" anti-vaxxer protesters are the SAME people who will happily wave signs and picket hospitals and clinics and smugly harass and vilify women and girls who are trying to access entirely legal reproductive health services, not to mention the ones who go too far and advocate violence/death to those who access the services and those who provide them.

I'm double-vaxxed with a booster (so three in total), plus a flu shot. This, combined with my basically leaving this building fewer than a couple of dozen times during the past 3 years and never having company, means that I have fewer worries about catching covid and food delivery people aren't scared to come to my door (I make sure to tell the person taking the order that I'm vaxxed and rarely around other people).

In the matter of pregnancy, I have no worries whatsoever that I will "catch" this. It's not contagious and even if I were engaging in activities that have the potential to result in pregnancy, having recently completed my 59th trip around the Sun means I really don't need to worry about it.

"abortion rights" is a wrong-question, legally speaking. the state has no legitimate interest in abortions unless the fetus is legally a person. if the fetus is legally a person, then presumably killing it becomes a non-trivial violation of its charter rights. unless you're talking about situations where the mother's health is in danger and the implied tradeoffs (which can even implicate self defense and such), this is not a "medical matter", but a question of whose rights take priority. it's a matter of when the fetus can/does possess individual rights, legally. that is literally the only thing that can elevate the state to having any business in a person's choice of medical procedures on themselves. that probably should be codified. canada chose "not until born" if i'm not mistaken, one of the few places in the world where that's true. i don't agree with that, but i don't live in canada and they can/will operate that way if they want regardless of my preferences.

i wonder, if a mother is assaulted in canada and the fetus dies, is the criminal charged with murder, or just assault? i presume not, based on the above, and that the criminal should rightly get murder charges tossed in the bin by the judge based on canadian law and only be charged with assault and maybe property damage (???).

i don't think maternal care solves the question of personhood triggering. "good maternal care" is uncontroversially positive, though some people instead disagree on what is "good" vs not.

I have no idea. It's not something that I ever considered necessary to research.

@Evie, is this anything you've run across in your reading about legal issues?

What we need are mandatory vasectomies for all men at the age of puberty. Once they've settled down, their wife/girlfriend can file a petition and a panel of (women) judges will decide if he's allowed to have children, at which point his procedure will be reversed.

As long as it's understood that not all women are fit to be mothers. Many aren't, and unfortunately some of them either don't know this or don't care. If society ever goes the way of people having to apply for permission to have children (a situation often encountered in science fiction settings where people live in space habitats or new colonies where reproduction and population growth have to be carefully managed so the demand doesn't outstrip the supply), it should be mandatory for both prospective parents to receive counseling and parenting courses so they have a better idea of what they're applying to get into for the next 18 years and 9 months.

 

[João III]

because that's not what the word "rights" means, at least not under the definition i'm used to operating under. similar to how we anticipate different things when we hear the word "squid" vs "tire iron". those constrain anticipation to things we expect to see, and things we do not expect to see.

we usually distinguish "rights" from "rules that only count for some people" as separate categories. you don't have to, per se', but it will result in confusion.

If a definition's inconvenient, then people will change the definition. Just work backwards from the preferred outcome

 

[Sommerswerd]

having recently completed my 59th trip around the Sun

Love it. So literally true and factually accurate in a very mundane, boring sense, but simultaneously so cosmically awesome and abstract. Happy belated birthday Valka BTW, cent' anni.

EDIT: For thread relevance... I just thought about whether the time as a passenger in Mom's belly counts as a trip. Obviously you weren't counting that. To be clear, I'm not looking for an answer... it just popped into my mind because of the thread.

I will say, upon reflection, that we often tell my younger son that he's "been to Italy", because my wife was pregnant with him when we visited there. Obviously, its said in jest, and he knows because he always protests... "Mommy/Daddy, that doesn't count". Which, upon further reflection makes me think about the impact/importance of what actually counts.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Love it. So literally true and factually accurate in a very mundane, boring sense, but simultaneously so cosmically awesome and abstract. Happy belated birthday Valka BTW, cent' anni.

EDIT: For thread relevance... I just thought about whether the time as a passenger in Mom's belly counts as a trip. Obviously you weren't counting that. To be clear, I'm not looking for an answer... it just popped into my mind because of the thread.

I will say, upon reflection, that we often tell my younger son that he's "been to Italy", because my wife was pregnant with him when we visited there. Obviously, its said in jest, and he knows because he always protests... "Mommy/Daddy, that doesn't count". Which, upon further reflection makes me think about the impact/importance of what actually counts.

Thank you!

The rest of it goes, "and next year I want to go somewhere else!" (because going around and around and around gets a bit routine; I want to see some other planets).

Another way of looking at is that I predict that some day people will pay insane amounts of money to go around the Sun in the space equivalent of cruise ships, with all sorts of fancy trimmings, and never see the absurdity of it since they can do the equivalent on Earth without risking the dangers of being in a spaceship.

That said, if I was insanely wealthy and the ship had a first-rate way to indulge in astronomy without light pollution and clouds getting in the way, that would be one way to convince me to go.


I didn't get a full trip with my mother, as it was only 9 months. And if the political situation in North America had gone differently it could have been much shorter. She was pregnant with me during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[Samson]

personhood tends to require extreme circumstances to merit killing the person. usually self defense, or states that allow it as punishment for homicide.

Corporations are people, and they can be "killed" at will.

 

[Farm Boy]

Still not quite living chattels.