Should Abortion Be Legal?

Yes especially if she was raped!!

Why make her go thru with it??

 

Maybe already said: However, I will put my opinion here. Why do men think they can control a women's body and women don't have the right or laws to control a man's body. When will we be able to change this...probably never because it's always has been the good old boys club...they need the same sanctions they push on us. The same consequences and rules they put on us.

 

Yes. Period.

 

Everyone controls everyone's body in a full democracy with universal vote and right to be elected in lawmaking institutions. Every criminal law is controlling, you are giving provisions about restricting peoples freedoms (arrest, incarceration) or even taking their life in some states. Even something as banal as traffic rules are controlling what our bodies are allowed or not to do.

It is a moot point.

Anyway on topic - I am of the opinion that the state needs to have a firm ground and good argument to restrict freedoms. The decision on when a bunch of cells become a human and should be entitled to all rights as such is arbitrary and there is no way to define a single moment that everyone can agree on, and there is also no wide social consensus on abortion, so than it might be a good idea for the state to err on the side of less than more regulation. Or it can be regulated by limiting abortion after a certain development point when there is at least some sort of majority agreement (as arbitrary as it might be) of medical professionals about what has a very good argument of being considered a formed enough human.

 

Roe -v- wade should be reinstated. Decided upon by learned judges but trashed by someone not so qualified. Easy solution?

 

Laws can be passed against abortion but how can they be realistically enforced. Ultimately it boils down to a simple proposition: My body, my choice.

 

No one is forfeiting anything, it is taken away by force. Criminal law is not a god given or independent self sustained set of inherent unchangeable values, it is as much a social construct, contract and agreement as anything else, abortion laws included.
And that is just an extreme illustrative example, everything in organised social interactions is regulated and controlled to some extent, freedom of choice is always limited in any group of humans (or other animals) of any size, be it by formal state legislature, traditional semicodified rules of less organised societies or even spontaneous non codified but still shared and intuitively understood ones that form spontaneously as soon as you group up.
Social life is always a controlled life, it is just that we make more fuss about a value/rule we don’t like or share than otherwise. We are often not even aware of how much of what we see as “normal” and being “ourselves” is just a bunch of successfully internalised social rules.

The “my body my choice” narrative is just using easy to digest catchphrases that can bring up emotional associations and therefore have the potential of achieving a certain desired propaganda impact (and the proof is in the pudding that it has been successful in that). Which is perfectly fine, all sides are doing that on such issues and if one side tries to take the high ground and be rational in “on the ground” activism it usually looses the social value wars to populists with their own empty phrases and an often not very critical public (and voter base).

But it is still an empty phrase.

 

I have a possible answer for that one.
Unless the abortion is for sound medical reasons or following a violent rape, the woman could be made to pay the price by spending 9 months behind bars,
Needless to say, the careless partner should be up on the next floor.

Fortunately for the UK, I did not stand at the last election.

 

I certainly agree with you, sexual activity should not be a passtime at a drunken party.

Perhaps locking them up for 9 months would sound a bit extreme in 2024.

 

Yes, it is a good theoretical principle (whether completely realized in practice is debatable) for the modern secular legal framework. The problem here being that this is not in itself something the other side disputes at all.

The dispute is whether it is or it is not harming someone else, whether the fetus and at what stage is considered such a separate entity that can be harmed. Even the embryo for some, though that is almost always religious and ideological, difficult to argue from a biological standpoint, so I would omit that part here.

It is in general not that easy to determine what is purely personal, and what is negatively effecting other people, which is one of the reasons legislation is not so clear cut on so many issues. Take psychoactive substances for example. One can argue it is purely personal, one is not harming anyone but himself. But there is also a counter argument that it can negatively effect both people that are directly related to that person and society at large though the increase of health system burdens and decrease of contributions to the society. But even that is not that simple as users of any substance span the whole gamut from fucked up addicts to functional addicts to recreational users with no negative repercussions to even some that might be more functional with than without. Than there is also the problem of outcomes of legislation - even if something is deemed to be socially harming it does not follow that legislating against it would necessarily improve the situation.
A big digression to say that the theoretical principle might be sound, but applications not that simple.

And abortion has the additional "weight" of dealing with potential direct harm that is usually never questioned in legal system, not those indirect social issues that are more complicated.

TLDR - it is irrelevant that we start from the foundational idea that the legal system is here to control harming others and that personal freedoms are to be restricted only after that point. Both sides agree on that and start from that same foundational argument, there is nothing to debate at that level. The difference is in when and by what criteria is an embryo/fetus/child considered developed enough to be given legal protections. A common argument pro-lifers use is that there is no substantial enough difference between the baby 1day before and after birth, but the absolutist stance of abortion usually agrees with sanctioning infanticide, but would find everything before fine. It is not an illogical argument.

Speaking about which - while we all agree on infanticide being immoral and illegal that is also relative and was not always seen as such across cultures and time periods. Many would have seen their babies as their properties to do whatever with, and someone from the outside chiming in as overstepping the boundaries of state powers. The point at which a parent (and also which one - you might very well construct a patriarchate value system where the pater families can kill even adult children and wife) stops being able to "deal with the situation" in any way desired has shifted through cultures anywhere from conception to adulthood, and every point is arbitrary. It is not a physical law, there are no certainties to be so precious about.

IMHO simplified and absolutist views on ethical and legal issues like this one are always ideological, irrational and blind. They are religious in nature even if only one side tends to be attached to actual religious institutions. There just are not strong and clear cut foundations for any position regarding such maters, if there were we would not have a problem in the first place. Which is why my argument is for the system to err on the side of permissiveness when there are no good final argument on either side, not because the prochoice side is necessarily ethically "in the right". Though I am certain about even that only in the embryo stage and not medically educated enough to have a specific opinion on the cutoff time, if any, but can see the argument for that and if I was a legislator that has to vote on the issue would probably ask for medical opinion on fetal development that might give at least s somewhat objective ground for decision making.

 

Maternal death in Texas up 56% since abortion ban, in a country which already has the highest maternal death rate in the industrialized world.

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

Investigation links Georgia's abortion ban to preventable deaths of 2 women

Texas woman dies after abortion care for miscarriage delayed over 40 hours

Pregnant Texas teen died after three ER visits due to medical impact of abortion ban

Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life

Woman dies after doctors fail to intervene because of new abortion law

Woman dies after abortion request 'refused'

 

Abortion IMO should not be a form of birth control. I’m not talking about the rape, incest, endangering to the mother, or an unborn with issues. A long way back I watched an abortion video. It’s horrible. I’m 100% against late term when I child could live outside the mother. Where a condom, go on the pill, take the morning after pill. Why don’t we get back to that.

 

Yes, but still abortion should be easily accessible as a last resort.