[RD] Restrictions on Abortions are illiberal

I'm a strong believer in giving people full agency about their bodies, and I have to say, limiting abortion to only the first few weeks of the pregnancy is an unacceptable restriction to that.

Think about it like this:
If another person could only survive by "parasitically feeding on your body" in some way, you would have the right to deny that person that privilege, and therefor sentence the person to death. Even if the consequences for you would be trivial, no person has the right to use you as a "host" of sorts. The right for bodily self-determination trumps every other right - as it rightfully should.

Pregnancy is a bit different in scope of course - after all, the person that is growing in your body is growing there because of your own decisions - but I don't see how that would affect the situation. The person that is growing in you would not even have the chance to grow at all if you had not made other decisions before, so why would you forfeit the right to a part of your body? That doesn't make sense to me.

There is an argument that some people make, that "Well, you had enough time before, now it's too late." - but honestly, that's ridiculous and nonsensical. It's like saying: "You had a chance to say that you didn't want sex the 10 minutes before, now it's too late, I'm already pounding you."

That would obviously not be accepted and be seen as rape. So I don't see why it would be acceptable to use that as an excuse here.

Of course, with late-term abortions, saving the life of any soon-to-be child that can survive by not continuing the mother's body, should be a high priority (as long as it doesn't endanger her), but if that's not possible - well, tough luck.

Overall, we need abortion laws to be expanded to include any moment in time before birth.

 

I'm with you until that very last sentence. "Birth" is not a morally satisfactory line, given that, aside from anything else, it can be achieved artificially by Cesarean section. If we can decide when birth is, even within limits, as we do in an ever-increasing number of cases, it can't be possibly treated as a point of objective moral transformation.

I mean, what does a moment-before-birth abortion actually look like, if not a Cesarean and a closed adoption? Actually terminating the pregnancy at that point would be more dangerous and more invasive, not less so.

 

I was ready to disagree strongly with this but you actually made a pretty good case. I think as long we do try to keep the child alive after it's out then you're not really "killing" it, you're just not letting it leech off your body. I can't even imagine how emotionally traumatizing it would be to have a late term abortion, but I guess it technically does fall under bodily self-determination.

There is also the counter argument that your rights basically change when a kid is involved. I mean, we would normally never expect you to be financially responsible for another person, but when that person is your child we'll punish you harshly for not doing so.

 

Personal autonomy has always seemed to me to be the strongest argument in this subject.

 

I understand, but abortions that late in the term are almost always the product of medical emergency.

 

I basically agree with that. But i am not willing to make the implicit concessions you make in the remainder of your post:

• a fetus does not have consciousness
• a fetus is not a person
• a fetus does not have rights
• a fetus does not experience "pain"

The conservative argument is fundamentally flawed in the first place.
Nociception is not the same as pain. And sentience is not the same as consciousness.

 

Won't somebody challenge you on your definition of 'liberal' or 'illiberal'?

 

can people kill their babies under the same logic?

 

I would agree that eugenics is restrictive and artificially skewing the liberal notion of evolutionary reproduction. Let us be reasonable and admit that abortion is a hard decision; to make life more comfortable for all involved. Why even make it a legal matter to begin with, other than the government has to control every facet of our lives, so we can be liberal in all aspects of our life. Since the government is not a living being, it can take the blame for everything, and we all can comfortably go about our daily lives, in a faux sense of freedom.

 

I just saw this, not sure if we should make a new thread
But regarding rape pregnancy and what happens to many girls in Republican states, its not pretty either

 

Religious Freedom folks!

 

I believe in the permissability of abortion because the cognitive abilities of a fetus is such that they should not be deemed persons. This absolves me of most of the moral quandaries supposed in the opening post. At least as far as abortion is concerned.

I would be curious to what @OP would think about the following case:
B is dying and needs to live parasitically off A for 9 months to survive
A agrees to allow B to live parasitically 9 months in order to survive
After 4 months A decides "screw B, I hate his obsession with violin music, I'm withdrawing my consent"
Do you think it's permissible to prevent A from killing B?

I in fact would say that it is permissible to prevent A from doing so.

Overall I think bodily integrity is an extremely important thing, but when people start talking in absolute rights terms I start getting skeptical, things are seldom that simple.

 

Well, that's again the rape example, isn't it?

A agrees to have Sex with B.
After a bit, A decides: "Screw B, this is not fun, I'm withdrawing my consent."
But B is having fun! Doesn't mean it's permissible to prevent A from withdrawing consent.

That example does of course lack the heavy hitter of death of person B being the consequence, but it works by the same logic. There might be a case to be made about ignoring our general values in extremely one-sided cases, but such a case would need to be argued for. As it stands, no, I don't think it would be permissible to prevent A from withdrawing their consent to support B.

 

I dunno, it seems to me that with sex you're agreeing to have sex until you don't want sex anymore. But in the parasite case you're agreeing full the full term of the treatment not until you no longer feel like it.

I mean consider if the person signed a statement initially agreeing to see it out for the full 9 months. Should they still be allowed to back out despite them signing a promise?

 

Perfection - it certainly doesn't make it better if you signed a statement agreeing to 'see it out' in the sex case.

'Good Samaritan' laws might come in here. In most countries, somebody providing first aid in an emergency cannot be sued if it goes wrong, except in certain cases which can usually be grouped under 'gross negligence'. One of those is leaving the scene - once you start providing first aid, you cannot stop until more qualified assistance arrives, unless the situation becomes dangerous. If we apply the same logic to the unconscious violinist, the decision as you've strictly described it would not be protected: once you take responsibility for somebody, you can't leave them to die because you don't like their musical tastes. However, if remaining hooked up to the violinist put you at risk of disease (as is an accepted 'get out' in Good Samaritan laws: nobody will force you to risk a bloodborne illness, for example), it would be acceptable to walk away.

 

You're right that restricting abortion is 'illiberal,' but that only goes to show that any ideology can be evil if taken to an extreme. By your reasoning, it's just as immoral to take hard-earned money from someone and give it to starving peasants. I think hardcore anarcho-capitalists really are the perfect liberals.

 

And then there's the real world. Where hardcore anarcho-capitalists really are really the perfect conservatives. There are only 2 groups of people under anarcho-capitalism, those who punish other for not doing exactly as they are told every minute of their lives, and those who are punished for not doing everything that they are told every minute of their lives.

 

That's not what anarcho-capitalists say. In their own words: "The peaceful market competition of producers and suppliers is a profoundly cooperative process in which everyone benefits, and where everyone's living standard flourishes."

 

But that's not what they do. What they would do is essentially what a baron with no king would do. Which is oppress everyone they can get their hands on.

 

Most principled ancaps are teens and twenty-somethings who live with their parents.