Why would a woman want an abortion?
A follower recently posted this clip to Secular Pro-Life’s Facebook page and asked for our thoughts.
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| This is how I feel. |
- Outlaw abortion.
- Change hearts and minds regarding the nature of the unborn.
- Eliminate the reasons women want to get abortion in the first place.
So why do women get abortions? According to research by Guttmacher:
The most common subreason given was that the woman could not afford a baby now because she was unmarried (42%). Thirty-eight percent indicated that having a baby would interfere with their education, and the same proportion said it would interfere with their employment. In a related vein, 34% said they could not afford a child because they were students or were planning to study.
Guttmacher also goes on to talk about other common reasons, including concerns about single parenthood, current relationships, being able to continue to care for other dependents, risks to fetal and maternal health, and more. Even so, these are pretty broad responses. To get a more personal perspective on why women choose abortion, consider these 26 stories from New York Magazine.
I read each one. Some of them I found heartbreaking, others enraging, but my overall takeaway was that there are a lot of factors that affect whether a woman chooses to abort, and we can do more to alleviate many of them.
To be clear, I don’t think strategy #3 on its own will be enough. Even if we did create a society in which no woman felt she needed an abortion, abortion should still generally be illegal because it should be illegal to kill other human beings.
But either way, while the pro-life movement debates incremental approaches versus sweeping legislation and struggles to get even 2nd trimester restrictions passed, we can at least work where there should be the least resistance: creating a society where women have better resources for avoiding unwanted pregnancies and better support for carrying wanted ones.
Yes and yes! This is very similar to the mission of Feminists for Life. Love it.
Excellent post. I have to say, I think that clip made most pro-lifers cringe when they first saw it. I think it's important to show people that most pro-lifers are nothing like that.
What would also help would be more education and public discussion about
the life of the unborn. Everyone is always talking about the mother
but, there's very little discussion about the baby.
Could not agree more JDC.
Excellent breakdown of what should be the pro-life focus.
Ron,
I have been pro life for 38 years. We have ALWAYS talked about the baby. But…. When we talk about the baby we are told we don't care about the women. When we talk about the women we are told we don't care about the baby. Both are needed both are necessary. Abortion kills babies and destroys the very essence of womanhood.
You make it sound as though you think I'm proposing that we need to choose between talking about the mother or the child but, of course I'm not. I'm simply testifying that in my own experience the conversations almost always seem to be focused on issues concerning the mother and there's not nearly the amount of talk about the baby's personhood, consciousness, instinctual knowledge, senses and awareness.
'Not caring about the woman' is something we will always be accused of no matter what we say because from the opposition's point of view, she's the only person in the debate who's accounted for. Even when they do view the baby as being alive, they only see it as being about as valuable a life as a jellyfish.
In my opinion, if we don't talk about the baby more because we're afraid of being accused of not caring about the Mom… we will consistently lose the argument because that will be seen as only being against something and not for anything.
I wouldn't be against abortion if killing a baby were not part of the process. I'm fine with it when a woman aborts smoking or aborts her plan to visit Toledo next Summer, she could even abort her pregnancy so long as she has labor induced when the baby is mature enough to be cared for by a hospital… I only have a problem with the killing the baby part. That's why I think more of our verbiage should be focused on the children.
Unless the woman is forced into an abortion it doesn't destroy the essence of womanhood at all.
19% of women are childless, and half of those woman chose to be childless. 28% of women chose to end the child's life in abortion at least once. so for nearly 20% of all women have abortions and want child(ren). they are destroying the one thing they want, that a man cannot give to her.
motherhood is the key difference between man and woman. So I would have to say that it does destroy the essence of womanhood.
abortion also has a 50/50 chance of ending a woman's (genetically female) life and therefore her womanhood.
There is nothing wrong with women being childless. There is also nothing wrong with a woman having an abortion because she doesn't want children.
the point is many want children, but still chose abortion. I think there is something wrong with a woman having an abortion because she never wants children. The doctors are not providing the right service, sterilization. With 10% of women being happily childless, sterilization shouldn't be a big deal. these women don't want to end lives, they don't ever want to create them in the first place! I think going through abortions because your doctor thinks you may change your mind is a great injustice for women.
I agree 100% that doctors should be willing to sterilize women if they want to be child free. The problem I have found is doctors are so afraid I will change my mind they are unwilling to do it for me.
It's sad, A woman did ensure at 23 I think the article said, but she saw 20 something doctors, and they would not do it until after she had an abortion.
http://www.yesandyes.org/2012/11/true-story-i-chose-to-get-sterilized-at.html
I've talked to probably around 10 doctors and I have had only one say they would do it for me but it is the policy of their office not to do it unless the woman already has kids or is over 35.
I do live in a rather conservative area so maybe if I tired calling around to some other areas I might have more luck finding someone.
I do agree that it is sad that doctors aren't willing to do something that would guarantee I would never have an unwanted pregnancy.
"“MY ENVIRONMENT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR RAISING OFFSPRING.” Her desire to kill the unborn is PERFECTLY in tune with what Nature does!"
Nature also pummels people to death with snow, hail, tornados, and the like. Would that make it ok for me to pummel my neighbor Joe to death? How in the world does "well nature kills people this way so I can too" make any sense…?
"Yes, it has "potential" that mere animals can't match, but Nowhere In Nature Is There A Requirement That A Potential Must Be Fulfilled"
[Not sure what's with the all caps but..] A major objection to this objection is that you could easily use this to justify killing newborns. They're less capable than many animals (dolphins, pigs, etc) because they haven't actualized their potential. Yet killing them would be wrong. Why? We value them for their humanity and potential. We know their DNA encodes genes for complex cognitive behavior. That alone is respected. It should not be up to any human but his/herself to end their life. Even if there was only a 10% chance a potential would come to fruition, it's not up to us to just assume it won't and kill them.
Also outlawing abortion does decrease abortion, we know this from the statistics pre-Roe.
Great response, LN. Talk about the naturalistic fallacy!
There's so much wrong with this "logic" I don't even know where to begin. One point, which LN already made, is that you're justifying infanticide. But since you also say that feral children aren't people (and therefore it would be okay to kill such a child), I doubt you care about the practical consequences of your philosophy.
Concerning feral children, here's a question for you: suppose a mother has limited resources and decides not to spend them on her newborn. Rather than placing the child for adoption, she simply ignores the child's needs, except for an occasional feeding. So neglected, the child's potential is drastically cut off, so that the baby never becomes a "person" by your standards. Anything wrong with that? You say that abortion is fine because parents have no obligation to allow their children's mental faculties to develop. Why not limit your child's faculties in some other way? After all, resources are limited.
As for your legal argument about banning pregnancy, it's abundantly clear that you've never gone to law school. I have. The 13th Amendment is not and never has been the basis for Roe v Wade. It's also beyond bizarre to suggest that you, me, and everyone else on the planet were once slavemasters by virtue of having once been a fetus.
Finally, something someone45 and I agree on. If I win the lotto, some of it is definitely going into a fund for tubal ligations and vasectomies. If you say you'd abort if you conceived, I WILL TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT.
"mental abilities that distinguish humans from ordinary/mere animals
do NOT develop until significantly AFTER birth" That line is where I stopped reading because you made it clear right there that your thoughts are dangerous. That line let's me know that you are one of those people who would be willing to entertain the notion of killing a baby after it's born because you still don't believe "it" is really a person even "significantly AFTER birth".
That statement goes way beyond just simply being wrong… it's terrifyingly wrong.
And you reveal yourself to be another person who doesn't want to face ALL the Facts, including the Facts about Existing Law, that I included in more than one post (the first of which can be found as a comment to the December 4 blog article).
My mistake. Somehow after reloading this page I failed to find my reply, and so re-posted it. The duplicate can be deleted. Sorry.
Everyone is always talking about the mother but, there's very little discussion about the baby.
Oh please. Most articles I read even on this site discuss the "unborn" so extensively that people here have convinced themselves that the fetus is a living entity unto itself and the mother is a mere afterthought. When the woman is mentioned at all, it's to excoriate her for even thinking of killing her baby.
"EXISTING law", but with more people like you in the world, there's concern about future law. I never make the foolish mistake of assuming that people will never go more insane than I currently believe possible.
I have no reason to doubt that there will eventually emerge a case in which a child is born and some pro-abortion judge somewhere in the US will rule that it's justifiable to end it's life for the same insane 'reason' you sited. Your original comment was all the proof I need to show me that unthinkable scenario is a very real concern and something we should fear because all it takes to become real is one judge who thinks the same way you do.
So now give me a reason to think that it's NOT something I should take seriously? Our current President of the US voted against the 'Born Alive Infant Protection Act' and that fact takes this argument out of the realm of hypothetical and makes it very very real.
I'm sorry for your loss. i'm sorry that doctors wont help you avoid having to make that choice. but there are options that work 100% abstinence, outer-course, and anal. Maybe if you had chosen adoption they would have done it for you. with adoption you could avoid being a post abortive mother, and avoid bring children into this world in the future. honestly, abortion is a horrible option for women who never want children.
anyway you look at it you are a mother, you are just childless. two options can end parenthood, but only one can end a life.
I am in a long term relationship. I am afraid abstinence would be harmful to our relationship since sex is a way for couples to connect and show their love. We do always use two forms of birth control because I want to avoid pregnancy and I'd rather not end up in a situation where I am faced with an unwanted pregnancy.
Although my partner and I have discussed him getting fixed since for some reason doctors are more willing to do it for child free men that child free women.
"mental abilities that distinguish humans from ordinary/mere animals
do NOT develop until significantly AFTER birth"
I agree with that statement, and I'm very much prolife. That's just a statement of fact, like "the human organism begins its life at syngamy (ie, conception)*" The question is not a factual one. Distinctly human mental activity occurs after infancy AND biologically, human life begins at conception. The facts aren't subject to dispute. It's what values you apply to the facts that matter.
Do you a) accord rights to a living organism because it has a capacity or do you b) insist that rights don't accrue until the organism develops an ability? Except in cases of congenital defects, the capacity is present from conception. If you wait for the development of distinctive mental activity to develop, that ability isn't present until you're a toddler.
—————–
*=excluding monozygotic twinning
you only addressed one of my points. what about the other two options that work 100 percent? and if you had chosen life you wouldn't have this problem, while still living child free.
"the mother is a mere afterthought" – You're right that that's a failing. I think it's easy to understand, though.
The conflict is between the right to live for X and the freedom of action of Y. Those defending X against the claim that Y has a right to kill are automatically going to feel sympathy for X. We often need to make a conscious effort to empathize with Y, by remembering that people can do the wrong thing without malign intent, and then bringing to mind the thoughts and feelings which make Y's position quite understandable even if it's still unacceptable.
"people here have convinced themselves that the fetus is a living entity unto itself" – (X is dependant upon another for survival) ≠ (X is not a living entity unto itself)
Do you realise you line of thinking has existed in Germany, Russia, Rwanda, southern american states and so forth from the dawn of time. Denying any human group person always engs in tragedy.
CORRECTION: Denying person status to PERSONS always ends in tragedy. Denying person status to organisms that PROVABLY are no more than mere animals, is exactly like denying person status to cockroaches, or worms, or cats and dogs.
I can now note that we make PETS of cats and dogs, but to do so is a Choice. Similarly, one can choose to have equivalently positive feelings regarding a particular unborn human. AND one might choose otherwise. Where is the tragedy in that (disregarding Stupid Prejudice)?
Here's a little something I neglected to include in my reply (below) to LN. Various folks oppose abortion because they claim that killing the unborn is "unnatural".
But since "fetal resorption" exists quite Naturally, the obvious reply to those folks is, "HAH!!!"
I have a slightly different take on the article – not a disagreement per se, just a different perspective.
I think that if on has PL beliefs, then it's incumbent upon that person, as a PLer to pursue #1 & #2.
(ie, Outlaw abortion; Change hearts and minds regarding the nature of the unborn).
I think that if on has PC beliefs, then it's incumbent upon that person, as a PCer to oppose #1 & #2.
(ie, Ensure access to abortion; Convince people that bodily autonomy rights trump the interests of prenatal human life).
#3 was to 'Eliminate the reasons women want to get abortion.' If reasons means rationale, then #2 is one way (among many) to work on #3. I'm assuming that it was intended to mean 'make efforts to eliminate the situations and circumstances in which women want to get abortion.'
That's something which in the abstract PCers and PLers should support. In the abstract it's something that EVERYONE should support. You could be indifferent or torn on the abortion issue. You could even be the common enemy if PCers and PLers: anti-choice and pro-abortion One Child Policy population control advocates.
No one should oppose this as a goal, but in practice everything depends on what means you propose to achieve the end. It's like 'end the problem of world hunger,' everyone agrees with the goal, but depending on your ideology/philosophy you'll support some plans and oppose others.
I'm not sure how you get everyone behind a comprehensive approach to #3 when the different groups tend to like their pet plan and dislike the other policies. In theory you could try to broker an 'All of the Above' compromise between PCers and PLers who both would agree to hold their nose regarding what they disliked to get what they liked.
That's only even a possibility (& not probable) because in theory the two groups'd make #3 a high priority. Any interest group which saw #3 as less important than preventing some portion of an 'All of the Above' compromise could sink the whole thing.
"Various folks" – Are any of those folks here? If not, your 'Ha' is just gratuitous posturing.
Are you Russell Crawford? I've run across him before on FB and you write like him.
I'm not sure what you mean. His argument is peppered with examples of two different sorts of errors that both are sometimes called the naturalistic fallacy.
The first is about 'natural' as opposed to artificial or unnatural. It's the presumption that something natural is good and unnatural is bad.
"I only drink 100% natural herbal tea because it's better for you than tea with artificial colors flavors & preservatives." Except when it isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium#Socrates
It's just a silly idea, but the modern version (from Rousseau and the romanticism movement) seems here to stay and acts as a sort of cultural counterweight to the view that a solution for every significant problem will eventually emerge from advances in science and technology.
Curiously, this statement goes beyond just the fallacy of an appeal to nature: "Her desire to kill the unborn is PERFECTLY in tune with what Nature does!" It sounds practically pagan, with the implication that nature is not only a source of what's good, but may even possess intentions.
I don't know about other mammals, but his description of fetal resorption is just plain WRONG when it comes to human biology. It's not the uterus "sucking the biomass and the life out of the unborn." It occurs when there're twins, and one prenate dies. The sibling, as it grows and develops within the womb incorporates and then absorbs the body of the dead twin into itself. The absorption isn't necessarily complete, and the dead prenate is usually an early embryo which formed incorrectly rather than a fetus.
The second mistake is ignoring what Hume called the 'is-ought' distinction. It's basically the principle that you can't derive a normative statement from descriptive statements. In other words, values/morals/ethics aren't the product of facts. The two are fundamentally different categories and any value statement depends upon some normative axiom and not empirical observation for it's foundation.
"facts of Science, about personhood, clearly support infanticide, while the facts of Law do not." – Wrong on both counts (see above)
"it needs to be stomped back into the quagmire from which it arose." – Vivid description, but just your opinion, whereas mine is that what needs to be stomped back into the quagmire from which it arose is the faulty assumption that because personhood is a sufficient condition for human rights, it must be a necessary. Your argument is based on this. This is a result of affirming the consequent, which is confused by many with modus tollens, but the latter is valid whereas the former is a fallacy.
"what sort of capacity does an abortion opponent reference?" – Certainly not Tupperware capacity!
"I can't say that they all agree" – You're just talking to me, not 'them all.'
"I will consider 'capacity for personhood'". Agreed.
"Unfortunately for the abortion opponent, it is a fact that mental capacity GROWS as a human organism grows." – Unfortunately for the abortion opponent, you just tried to pull a three card monte on him. (Find the lady.) Unfortunately for you, I'm not so easy to trick. Obviously mental capacity grows, but we're talking about capacity for personhood.
"Logically, then, for most of a pregnancy, an unborn human does NOT have the capacity for personhood." – Wrong. It doesn't have personhood. It does have the capacity for it.
"I will admit it is difficult to say just what the minimum brain size" – Brain size isn't the limiting factor, it's the development of brain structure and the creation and use of neural pathways.
"for personhood to be acquire-able by a human" – It is acquire-able by all healthy human organisms. It's something inevitably acquired during the course of development of all normal humans. One's that are abnormal and/or suffer injury or illness or deprivation may never become persons. If it's a congenital defect, then the capacity was never present, for the other maladies it's lost. For a normal prenate it's always present.
"There is a "rouge test" – It's usually called the mirror test. You left out elephants. Some pigs pass too.
"it often takes 18 months before a human brain develops enough to pass that test." – That's the average. Normal range includes earlier and later, but it's the rough guidepost.
"So, unborn humans, with less mental capacity than the apparently-inadequate capacity of infants, very likely completely lack the capacity for personhood." – Absolutely wrong. Mental capacity is used as a synonym for mental ability. I consider mental ability irrelevant to moral status. What matters is capacity, which is the being able to acquire an ability. Personhood is present or absent depending upon one's current abilities. If you believe human rights are possessed by infants or someone (who'll recover in time but at present) suffers from the effects of brain injury, then current ability level and personhood are the wrong criteria.
I'm afraid that I don't believe that there is such a thing as an essence of womanhood. I don't believe in 'essence' generally. I just think that there arr things which either do or don't satisfy the definition. Essence is related to universals, and rejecting belief in them is why I chose the icon / avatar I'm using 🙂
Other than that, I like your posting.
Can we agree on the latter and disagree on the former? Women who choose to be childless aren't any less women than those who want to be mothers. They're culturally different but equally women.
Implantables a very effective – they've supassed IUDs. I think the 'as used' rate is 96% That's important because the most important factor in failure rates is faulty use- which is why implantables are #1 and IUDs #2: there's nothing to do. You can't forget or make a mistake. I think injections are #3, but I'm not certain about that one.
With these options and plan B as well as older methods, I'd think abortion shouldn't be considered "necessary" by even PCers now.
I'll try to help you understand where you're failing to understand.
First, you're just asserting personhood is necessary for rights. As I explained bellow, that's because you probably don't understand logic. When you see that it's only established that it's sufficient and not necessary you should understand that your argument fails because it critically lacks an argument for its necessity.
We reject the necessity position and propose an alternative. Rather than personhood – which is manifestation of ability, we think in terms of capacity: actual or potential ability to perform,
While you have no argument to prefer personhood over capacity for personhood, we can point to examples like infants and some recovering wounded whom your view prevents having. Clearly we beat you on that round.
Now, you can say that this is a potential personhood view, and that's not wrong. Unfortunately for abortion advocates like yourself, It seems like you're using an old idea about 'potential'- that there're only three choices: what is impossible/false, what is merely potential/possible and what is actual/necessary; That's going all the way back to ancient Greek modalities, to Aristotle and his sea battle. Now it's common to talk about probability in this context to. That's something you're not bothering to think about.
Rather than personhood conferring abilities, we argue for personhood capacity, and rather than mere potential for abilities , we'd specify a modality that incorporates specifics about probability and causality: presumptive abilities. Within the field of embryology, the word "presumptive" has a specialized meaning. If, under normal conditions, something can be expected to develop into a particular structure, then it can be labeled the 'presumptive' incarnation of said structure. In a normal fetus, those characteristics associated with moral status are not merely 'potential', for any sperm-ovum pair might be said to have such 'potential'. Inasmuch as, under normal conditions, a normal fetus will be expected to develop into a human with moral status conveying traits, it would seem to be fair to say that it has capacities which are not (in a weak sense) only potentially present, but which (in a stronger sense) could be considered to be presumptively present. That stronger sense of a potential which (absent some external disruptive influence) seems to be what motivates our intuitions about moral status in cases like judging non-human animals versus humans at different stages of development and in cases of comatose patients who are likely to recover.
Where is the tragedy disregarding Stupid Prejudice? It's the Stupid Prejudice in your position that's the tragedy.
Why should it matter if no abortion opponents in this forum use that particular argument? It remains true that SOME claim that killing the unborn is unnatural!
And so it is THEM who deserve to be laughed at.
even if our side does a bad job of considering Y, it's still better than
our opposition does with regard to X. We don't dehumanize Y or claim
that Y has no rights. We don't portray Y as a mere thing.
In fact, you do dehumanize the mother and deny her rights, because you consider this adult female less important than a fetus, than a "human" who hasn't even been born yet. If her personhood ceases at the instant of conception, then she's just an object to you.
I've dealt with Crawford before…and run him into the ground multiple times with his own idiocy. I haven't seen the "you have to choose between a fetus and a baby" argument here so far though.
Good responses to what's been here from you and the others so far though. KUTGW and Cheers.
I can invite you to see this link (prepend the http and www): .vetinfo.com/dfetsorb.html
It is about dogs and not humans, but I don't know that the fundamental mammalian reproductive hormonal biology is hugely different in this matter. So, see this quote: "The most common causes of fetal resorption are inadequate progesterone levels …"
Now consider what I wrote before, about fetal resorption being triggered in animals by an environment of scarcity. More specifically, this is normally "food scarcity", and I suspect a specific dietary deficiency is the fundamental cause of those inadequate progesterone levels. MOST humans don't have that bad of a food-scarcity problem, especially with the wide availability of vitamin supplements, and THEREFORE fetal resorption of the specific type I was referencing, is rare in humans.
Here's a link indicating ways to INCREASE low progesterone levels, thereby implying what sorts of nutrients might, if deficient in the diet, cause progesterone levels low enough that fetal resorption could occur (prepend an https, not an http): sites.google.com/site/miscarriageresearch/hormones-and-miscarriage/progesterone-research/how-to-increase-progesterone
Finally consider that the type of fetal resorption I've referenced only happens early in a pregnancy. After a couple weeks, if progesterone levels drop, a rather ordinary miscarriage happens instead.
Well, if an embryo is implanted in the womb for only a week or so, and then vanishes because of fetal resorption, how often is a woman going to notice it? She might not even know she was pregnant for that short a time! The normal menstrual cycle is scheduled to happen a couple weeks after ovulation, and therefore only a little more than a week after a typical implantation occurs, by a blastocyst into the womb.
I have an IUD. I can't use hormonal birth control since the hormonal side effects are way to severe for me.
Your nonsense gets you nowhere. NOTHING that I have written in any way implies that an unborn human organism EVER fails to qualify as a human organism!
However, it IS an ANIMAL organism. A white blood cell is an animal organism, too, but you don't worry about its personhood status, do you? Yet, in terms of "potential", the white blood cell has EXACTLY the same potential as a zygote. It merely needs more help than does a zygote, in order to achieve that potential. Yet no abortion opponent EVER bothers to think that we MUST provide that help! Tsk, tsk!
Furthermore, with respect to unborn humans, IT IS GENERALLY EASY TO MAKE MORE. Remember the Law of Supply and Demand? The more common something is (or can be), the less it typically gets valued. And valuations of humans are NOT excluded from that Law. Just think about any Boss who ever denied a request for a raise, saying, "There's plenty more where YOU came from!"
Therefore, one of the most ironically IDIOTIC thing about abortion opponents is, they CLAIM that human life is valuable, and then they ACT to DEVALUE it, by trying to make it MORE COMMON.
The "stupid prejudice" about which I speak is the tendency to think that a human animal organism somehow deserves superior treatment, when compared to a nonhuman animal organism, such as a worm, JUST because the one organism happens to be human. There is NO prejudice in my position, because I regard all mere animals as equally being MERE ANIMALS.
If I was to say that some animals deserve special treatment compared to others, I would use other criteria than, "Duuhh, I like parameciums, and therefore they deserve special treatment." I would use something like "This species is endangered. If we want to preserve the genetic diversity of the world, we need to give it special treatment. (And humans, of course, don't especially qualify as "endangered".)
Neither "Russell Crawford" nor "FB" rings a bell.
The closest thing I can offer to a "choose between a fetus and a baby" argument was posted at the "Objections to Biological Humanity" blog article. The link is (prepend only the http): blog.secularprolife.org/2013/12/objections-to-biological-humanity-from.html
It's in one of the last two comments (out of 139 as I write this) on that blog-article page. You will need to click the "see more comments" button twice.
Funny, I immediately think of Crawford who is from Telltales Game: The Walking Dead. ( http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Crawford_Oberson )
That fictional man had no tolerance for the weak, the disability, the children, or even the elderly.
I think i'll pass.
"Like I've written multiple times, I accept the Law in its arbitrary assignment of personhood at birth, regardless of it being out-of-sync with the Science."
Could you please explain your rationale for this (again)? Thank you.
FB stands for Facebook.
Don't forget castrations (not joking here).
OK, thanks; I've never had any interest whatsoever in using FaceBook (and the more I hear about how it treats its users, the less I want to be one of them).
A couple of clarifications about my explanation of the rationale.
In talking about "assault" of one adult against another, I forgot to specify the phrase "without consent".
I also forgot to specify "simplicity" in saying that the birth-point has an advantage for arbitrarily granting person status, in spite of the Science. If it might be "equally simple" to instead specify a time such as "two months after birth", for granting Legal Person status, well, that is where the "physical" and "social" things I described become relevant factors. No such differences as those exist at the two-month mark!
"A major objection to this objection is that you could easily use this to justify killing newborns."
I am not going to comment for ignorance_is_curable here, but for reference, not everyone agrees with you that infanticide is morally unjustifiable.
"There is a "rouge test" in which it is revealed whether or not a mind has developed enough to recognize its own body in a mirror."
I am going to respond to this part for now. (There is too much here for me to respond to at once.)
I think that in regards to the mirror test, some adult humans might be able to pass this as well due to their brains not working properly/correctly when it comes to this.
Well, Facebook has its good aspects and its bad aspects. If you don't want to join, that's fine.
As for Russell Crawford, this might be his website: http://naturalabortionlaws.com
Basically, some of the people posting on this blog might know Russell Crawford due to him sometimes/frequently posting on abortion-related/abortion-themed pages and/or groups on Facebook.
It should be obvious that the rouge test (a.k.a. mirror test) can't be used with every organism that you might want to test. The blind, for example…
I didn't say anything about infanticide being or not-being morally unjustifiable. I simply stated that very few people (compared to the whole population) are interested in changing the Law such that infanticide could be allowed. And I stated I am not one of those people.
I'll take that as a compliment, that I'm not exhibiting the idiocy of Crawford.
Goodness… I just see these popping out as I scroll down. How many more tips would I have for you if I read all of your posts? Maybe one day we'll find out 🙂
Debate Tip #4: Avoid logical fallacies like Ad Hominems.