South Dakota abortion ban. Thoughts? - by fett
SubJeff on 23/2/2006 at 19:44
Quote Posted by Starrfall
SE: that's what most of the articles seem to be saying. The only real exception seems to be this: "The bill as written does make an exception if the fetus dies during a doctor's attempt to save the mother's life." It's kind of a weird way to word it, but I think they want it to mean that if the mother is having lung surgery or something and complications kill the fetus, the doctor won't go to jail.
Hmmm. I think it might mean saving the mother's life during a difficult birth, but I only say this because foetal death is much more likely at this time than due to other causes (bar trauma) since most women of conception age are relatively healthy. Of course they wouldn't need such an exception if abortion was allowed in cases where there are forseeable difficulties for birth.
There must be
something that makes provision for dangerous pregancies. No one but no one is that dumb.
One of the other issues here, and I'm firmly on the fence on this one, is allowing foetuses to go to term when you know they have serious defects. Pro-lifers, it would seem, support the idea whilst many people would abort if they discovered their unborn child had Down's Sydrome (or worse) they just have to live with it regardless.
fett on 23/2/2006 at 19:46
Quote:
and that would be abortion in many cases.
Don't take this antogonistically, but how do you know this? I'd really like to see stats or some legitimate research and I have no idea how to find it - at least the kind that's unbiased.
Quote:
One of the other issues here, and I'm firmly on the fence on this one, is allowing foetuses to go to term when you know they have serious defects. Pro-lifers, it would seem, support the idea whilst many people would abort if they discovered their unborn child had Down's Sydrome (or worse) they just have to live with it regardless.
Speaking from the fringes (read:non-religious) of that camp, the pro-life movement is seriously divided on this issue more than any other. Mainly because you have the religious and non-religious factions within the movement who have differing motivations for their stance.
Briareos H on 23/2/2006 at 19:52
No proof there, but I highly doubt that a single unemployed woman (take a student for example) would have a better situation with a child. That could happen of course, but what would mostly happen ?
Gingerbread Man on 23/2/2006 at 19:58
I have a question, and though it sounds a bit like derailment and flippancy, it IS in fact a serious question.... the answer to which will help me formulate a further opinion on the topic at hand.
For those people who believe that life begins at conception and that -- for religious / spiritual reasons -- this life is sacred and that it is God's will that the life exist, how do they account for identical twins?
Here's how I understand the position (forgive if I oversimplify or accidentally misrepresent):
1. Teh sex
2. Conception / Fertilisation
3. Human being starts here
4. Cell division/ baby-building
...
155723. Baby wanders outside and gets footprinted
I assume that this has to do with souls, yes? Surely if a baby was not endowed with a soul the second conception takes place, the anti-abortion camp would find it a lot hard to rationalise a moral belief in the sanctity of preborn babies at the 100% level. So it makes sense to me that the same people who think all abortion is bad / immoral are the same who believe that a soul of whatever description is given to the prospective baby at the time of conception, and vice versa. These two positions seem to coexist quite cogently.
Is it really just a "well God knows there will be two babies so He has a second soul waiting in the wings for when the zygote splits" argument? Is it that cut-and-paste? Or do the majority of people (religious and otherwise) simply not know / understand / remember that identical twins are not the result of two identical eggs hooking up with two identical sperm?
I mean, we're talking four to twelve DAYS before twinning.
Or do religious types believe something along the lines of a shared soul?
Again, not flippant, these are actual questions from my actual brain.
fett on 23/2/2006 at 20:12
Jonesy: WAHT?
GBM: I haven't made much inquiry into the twin issue amongst the religious community, but I *might* be able to guess that they believe the soul exists pre-eminintly in the mind and will of God prior to actual physical conception. There are a plethora of verses speaking about God's knowledge of individuals in the womb, but even more speaking of the individual destinies of men and women in God's economy 'before the world began.' This gets into a big quantam physics style discussion of God standing outside of time and space, etc. but the bottom line would be (theologically speaking) that even identical twins have individual destinies in the mind of God before conception. Keep in mind that while conception and fertilization works on a chronological timeline, the Judeo/christian concept of God places him outside of and unaffected by said timeline.
I'm sure there are various shades of this idea in the pro-life camp, but that would be the run-of-the-mill seminary/theological answer.
Gingerbread Man on 23/2/2006 at 20:17
Yeah, see, that still smacks of the old "Why did you think God would talk to you through the mouth of an elephant instead of through the mahout?" kind of thing.
Abdicating things to the sphere of "God is mysteriouswayman" with one mouth and then flatly rejecting the idea that God might be saying "oh holky fuck a child that isn't supposed to be, I should plant the idea in the mother's head to have it aborted" with the other mouth is just weird to me.
Either you guys believe in an unknowable God who always has very good reasons for things and it's not fruitful to try to second guess Him, or you don't. It all seems really convenient to me. It's all Que Sera Sera until it's something that someone has a political interest against, and then it's a lungful of "God's will is perfectly clear"
Elephant, mahout.
SubJeff on 23/2/2006 at 20:20
Why can't a soul "twin"? That would be a nice and easy get-out for them.
jprobs on 23/2/2006 at 20:20
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
One of the other issues here, and I'm firmly on the fence on this one, is allowing foetuses to go to term when you know they have serious defects. Pro-lifers, it would seem, support the idea whilst many people would abort if they discovered their unborn child had Down's Sydrome (or worse) they just have to live with it regardless.
Careful, I have a friend who has a 4 year old daughter that doctors told them before she was born that she had downs syndrome. She is perfectly normal.
How deformed is deformed? How retarded is retarded? Who is going to make that call?
Gingerbread Man on 23/2/2006 at 20:24
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Why can't a soul "twin"? That would be a nice and easy get-out for them.
Well, yeah, that's sort of what I'm asking as well. Although that would run afoul of the "unique and special snowflake" angle on things, I think.
I'm really not sure. This whole end of religious thought and belief is just so completely alien to me that I have never been able to successfully Devil's Advocate it, even. I understand the positions, I just don't for a second get the nuances or underlying rationale. I'm not even demanding evidence or airtight explanation, I just simply can't understand this fascination with "there must be more to life than this" that the relatively well-off and well-educated and opportunityfull people in the 21st Century in the Industrialised Western World seem to have to cling to like everything around them is such unbearable shit.
