Favoring 'exceptions' to an abortion ban is morally degenerate

[cthulu2016]

This point is not novel but has sometimes been framed inelegantly here. I like to think I can put an argument together so I'll take a stab at a clean presentation of the issue. If I fail in clearly defining the issues it is my fault, not the fault of the underlying argument.

"I favor banning abortion except in cases of rape or incest" is an utterly indefensible moral stance.

• If abortion is not homicide then what is the basis for banning it? Simply to reduce female autonomy. Why else? If it is not homicide then the state has no legitimate interest in it. It is an unusually safe medical procedure so there is no unique public-safety issue. Short of homicide, what could argue for a ban in the context of the American system where individuals are presumed to have autonomy unless there is a strong and legitimate state interest to the contrary?

• If abortion is homicide then the only justifiable homicide (assuming the US has not declared war on the particular fetus, and the fetus has not been tried and convicted of a capital crime) is self-defense. Thus one could argue for abortion to save the life of the mother. It's tricky, but it can be done. If abortion is homicide, however, there can be no justifiable homicide exception for the circumstances of the conception of the person being killed. The popular 'homicide with a rape/incest exception' is an affront to all of our moral reasoning about homicide.

One can argue that abortion is or is not homicide (I obviously believe it is not homicide) but one cannot argue that it is homicide while allowing "exceptions" (Unless we radically change how we think about homicide.)

So how did the one position that it is impossible to argue in the context of American law and conventional western morality become the preferred position of anti-choice politicians (of either party)?

Politics.

There is no real majority American position on abortion because people are often vague and reactive moral thinkers. We have general sympathies and gut reactions that do not translate cleanly into views on what is really a rather stark binary question.

"Ban all abortion" does not poll well. The only way to be an anti-choice majority party is to carve out compromises to attract a few muddy thinkers from the middle to your side.

On the other side of things, it appears that the only way to craft a majority pro-choice position is to allow abortion but to complain about how awful it is. (The Democratic "Safe, legal and rare" position.)

The Democratic position is a murky finesse. But since the Democratic position is not presented in terms of extra-legal moral absolutes that murkiness is merely typical of policy in a diverse nation.

The Mitt Romney position is an indefensible on any grounds and, being presented as referent to extra-legal moral absolutes, is evil by its own terms. Whatever one's starting point, the Romney position is morally degenerate. Something to offend everyone.

[TruthAnalyzed]

1. Good post

I would say it either has to be

1 - Ignorance
2 - Trying to reach a compromise. I know people who would settle for a ban on abortion with exceptions, because it is closer to what they really want.
3 - Considered, not homicide, but something else which is still bad and should be avoided. Quasi-cide maybe.

[cthulu2016]

2. Quasicide.

That really gets to it. A baby is a person. A blastocyte is not a person. So something must happen in between... something mysterious. So we must be humble, lest we over-step.

The error there is, of course, that a baby's person-hood is a legal construction. The state does not believe in the soul, or disbelieve in the soul. The question is irrelevant to state functions. So the state can define person-hood arbitrarily, say at removal from the mother's body, without presenting any novel problems.

The law operates in bright-lines.

A girl can dress like a child and have sex with 30 sixty year-old men on her eighteenth birthday, but not the day before. That feels wrong to many people. Perhaps to most people.

But the line of adulthood must be a bright line. The whole system of law collapses without such bright lines.

We citizens of an ostensibly free society are supposed to reconcile the digital necessities of law with out own analog and shifting emotional reactions.

[TruthAnalyzed]

3. I think a lot of people are in that boat...

they don't know where to draw the line. Is a baby a baby the day before it is born? Is a 38 week old baby that has been born more of a person than a 39 week old baby in the womb?

There should be a way to distinguish a line. If a minute-old baby is a person, what about the minute before it was born? A day before that? A week before that?

It's a hard question to answer. That's probably part of the reason why people are willing to compromise.

[REP]

4. The easy question to answer:when is a pregnant woman a person?

The "person a minute before birth" question is a canard; besides the profound changes that take place at birth (reversal of the circulatory system, to name just one), terminating a pregnancy a minute before birth is called ... birth, and almost always with a live baby. Those "late term abortions" so much hand wringing is done over are both very rare and are done late in the second trimester or very early third, and usually on dead or dying fetuses.

Any pregnancy in any stage takes place within a person - this is the one thing the whole "personhood" debate conveniently overlooks.

[TruthAnalyzed]

5. I disagree

It's not about overlooking the mother.

It's trying to reconcile the rights of the mother vs. the rights of the unborn child.

Like you said, there is no natural, bright line. That's the whole reason for the debate. People that don't think abortions should be allowed before 'time X' aren't simply dismissing the mother, they simply believe that at that point both entities have equal rights.

[11 Bravo]

7. So, do you agree that a quarter-sized blob of undifferentiated cells deserve the same ...

rights as a sentient adult woman? That's not a debate, that's an attempt to allow someone else's religious beliefs to trump settled law.

[TruthAnalyzed]

9. No, I don't.

That's not what I said though. For people who feel that a quarter-sized blob of cells deserves the same rights, to them, that is the point where the mother's rights and the unborn child's rights meet.

Because of the fact that people have different ideas on when life or personhood begins, we have a debate on the subject. As a parent, I am unable to go back in time and pick a point where I can say 'Before this point, my daughter wasn't really my daughter, but after this point, she was'.

That's what makes it so difficult. The answer to the debate is through discussion. The answer doesn't lie in slinging mud at people who don't agree with you.

[11 Bravo]

6. That's how I've framed the argument every time I encounter a "forced birth" Repug.

I have never received a response more coherent than "Oh yeah, well, sputter ... aaargh ... you hate babies!"

[randome]

8. You expect logical consistency to form in a vacuum of hate?

You must be mad.

[Gold Metal Flake]

10. The abortion debate is a moving window.

The goal for conservatives is a complete ban. Anything less is just the needed incremental steps required to get to the total ban.

It's taken them a long time to get here, but they have achieved much in the past 10 years. What they say and what they want may be slightly different at the moment. That is just window dressing.