Abortion laws.. what should they say?

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.

Forcing someone to remain pregnant against her will seems to qualify as involuntary servitude.

No non-criminal act, such as voluntary sex, can be used to commit someone to involuntary servitude. Making sex a criminal act would be ludicrous.

Therefore, there should be no abortion laws except to maintain safe, quality service...

 

Approximately 60% of human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion due to genetic defects - nature's way of selecting the most fit to survive. The controversy is on the 40% of induced human abortions.

Rational people do not decide, "Hey, let's get pregnant and have an abortion!" Human abortion is never a first choice, rather a result of contraceptive failure. We are people who thrive on constructive alternatives and choice. There will always be human abortions for a wide variety of reasons. Prevention and education are far more effective than prohibition.

An extreme "no abortion ever" stance, presumeably held by a "conservative," means those persons are will to take long-term, full responsibility for their actions. By imposing their choice on others, "mandatory motherhood," they take full financial and social responsibility for the mother and potential child's well being for at least 18 years.

"Conservative" implies keeping government out of people's individual lives. You cannot have it both ways, unless prevention and constructive alternatives are more attractive. As a republic we work better on incentives.

Another problem is that the boundaries between social, medical and religious realms tend to become confused. A "fetus" is in a uterus. A "baby" is viable and outside the uterus. Another confusion point is "when does (human) life begin?" The answer is never, it began once and is a continuum. People and the media tend to short-cut critical thinking and strike right for the emotional hook, usually managing to impose guilt trips along the way.

Bottom line: we need greater respect for all life forms, not increase focus on "fetus worship." At 6.4 billion human individuals and growing, we need to take greater long-term responsibility for all of our actions. As our human "footprint" becomes increasingly greater on the planet, human abortion will become a minor concern vs. sustainable food, shelter, air and water quality and ecosystems.

 

The question in my opinion comes down to who has the constitutional ownership of the uterus. Is it the woman's, the fetus's, the government's or is it the husband's.

I think we all agree that it does not belong to the government.

In the bible, it was the husband's. (So I guess fundamentalists might be fine with abortion as long as it came from the husband.)

Prior to Roe v Wade in many US states, it was the fetus's. The woman had no rights. The fetus had all the rights.

Roe v Wade simply stated that woman had rights. Not their husband, boyfriend or her father. What a novel idea, that a woman actually owned her own body.

Now this doesn't end the issue. Roe v Wade did not say that a woman had complete and total control of her uterus for the 9 full months. Indeed, you can't get an abortion at 8 months. The most you can get is a c-section. The reason for this is that at 8 months, since the fetus now has the ability to survive on it's own, that it now starts to have constitutional rights.

So when you are at the extremes, the constitutional issues are clear. The woman has all the rights at the beginning and the fetus has none. At the end, they have closer to equal rights. But how do you draw a line between the extremes? Roe v Wade picked 24 weeks. Prior to 24 weeks, the woman does not need a reason. Her rights are absolute. It's her uterus to do what she wants.

After 24 weeks, her rights are not so absolute. The fetus starts getting some constitutional protections. And as time marches on, there comes a point when a woman can only have an abortion if her life is threatened.

Personally, I think Roe v Wade was quite brilliant. It didn't ignore the "rights" of the fetus. It only wieghed those rights versus the womans.


Here is a question to all the men out there. Do you think the constitution protects your ownership of your body parts? Or do you think congress can pass a law saying that your kidney can be used by someone else or be removed against your will?

If you believe the former then you must also agree that woman have that same right. I happen to believe this. Therefore I find it unconstitutional for abortion to be made completely illegal. Yet rest assured, if Bush is re-elected, it will illegal within the year. (3 years tops.)

 

"involuntary servitude" quelle convoluted argument! Abortion is about biology and morality - wringing a bizarre equivalency between slavery and pregnancy out of the constitution is meaningless.

How about a more direct statement: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...?" Children, born or unborn, should be allowed these rights. Contraception is cheap and effective, and "contraception failure," I suspect, is less common than failure to use contraception.

That other argument about 60% of pregnancies ending in spontaneous abortions is even sillier. 100% of human lives end in death, yet when other persons intervene to cause a death, it's generally called "murder."

Marg: I disagree with most of what you have written, too. I do admire your dedication to civilty, though.

 

I tend to the bumpersticker attitude of abortion -

If you're against abortion, then don't have one.

Even though I'm not against abortion, I promise I'll never have one!

-m.

PS - Bill Maher brought up a good point about this last night - all those frozen embryos that are not being used for stem cell research - either they will be used for stem cells, or they will be destroyed. He called upon right-wing women who are against abortion to 'save' those embryos from being destroyed if they can't be used for stem cells, and have them implanted into their bodies. I'm all for it.

 

"Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

The Dec of Ind is a great document but it has no legal standing in the USA.

Oxy, who has the superior right to life? The fetus or the woman? In other words, can an abortion be performed when the choice is between the woman's life and the fetus's?


Off topic.
To other readers.... We keep hearing how God was so central to the formation of our nation and how horrible activist courts have been to remove God from our life and government.

Do you know how many times God, or creator or deity or church or religion are mentioned in the constitution? ZERO for all of them except the word religion in the 1st amendment where it is RESTRICTED.

The word Creator is in our Declaration of Independence but as I said above, the Dec of Ind has no formal legal standing in the USA. Some great men signed it, but no congress nor state ever did.

 

Forced pregnancy, against the will of the pregnant woman, is the issue.

Involuntary servitude is not exactly the same as slavery, therefore the additional inclusion in the amendment...

 

I have to say that Oxygene has a couple of good points, and they highlight the rhetoric that pushes this issue away from logic and towards emotion. "Involuntary servitude" refered to slavery, and perhaps to indentured servitude (which was not entirely involuntary). Pregnancy is really a different issue, though a parallel can be drawn in the case of rape. Many unwanted pregnancies certainly come from voluntary, unprotected sex, and not from failure of contraception, but there may be many that come from a husband forcing or coercing his wife to have sex.

To answer a point in Marg's opening post: I do not think that any doctor should be required to perform abortions. That would indeed be close to involuntary servitude.

As for as laws, I think Roe vs Wade found a darn good compromise, considering the disparate opinions on the issue.

But I would suggest that a good law would require all schools to teach the proper use, risks, and limitations of all contraceptive methods from a very early age, and would make contraception available to every person. An extremely large segment of the anti-abortion camp also opposes contraception and sex education on the spurious grounds that these will encourage sex.

Part of the difficulty of this issue is that the question of when personhood begins is unanswerable. And it becomes much worse because every religion has its own answers. Does personhood begin at conception, implantation, quickening, 24 weeks, birth, when language is aquired, or at graduation from college?

And how come it's a crime to have or perform an abortion, but not a crime to drop a bomb from an airplane that kills a pregnant woman and her fetus just because you are mad at the nut job who runs the country she happens to live in??? I think I only know about half a dozen people who are opposed to both abortion and war.

I think that abortion should be discouraged, except under extreme circumstances, but that in the end the decision must belong to the pregnant woman, with the advise of whatever individuals she choses to consult.

No law is ever going to solve it, because laws are rigid, impersonal, and incapable of exercising judgement or human compassion. Whenever people make social decisions based on religion, there will be war, figurative or literal.

 

i sincerely hope you mean that "60% of human abortions end spontaneously"

 

I think I was the one who lurched off topic in that Kerry thread. Remember what the immortal Homer J. Simpson said: "Marge, its uterUS, not uterYOU." : )

(is it just a coincidence that the banner ad at the bottom is for a "Help Save the Unborn" campaign? if so, freaky)

(copied and pasted from the other thread)
For those of you who are pro-life, how many of you have avidly supported the distribution of free condoms everywhere, especially in high schools and colleges. If you're really serious about saving fetuses, wouldn't one of the best approaches be to make sure they're never conceived in the first place?

Government studies have shown that free condoms wouldn't encourage children to have sex, it would simply encourage them to have safe sex. This move would have the added bonus of preventing the spread of STDs. And if condoms DID lead to kids having sex, who otherwise would not have, at least they won't get pregnant or spread STDs. If you're pro-life and STILL against the distribution of condoms, then I can only assume that you don't actually care about saving fetuses, but about imposing your values (no sex before marriage, no sex out of wedlock, sex for reproduction only) upon others. Either that, or you're against contraception (which I also don't understand).

Which brings me to my last point: what is the significance of that moment when a sperm enters the egg? Yes, there's a "potential for life" here, but that can be said of a lot of things. A guy saying "Hey baby, come here often?" to a women in a bar also has the "potential for life." By what right does that woman refuse to have sex with that man??? There's a potential life at stake!

On the other end, why can't a parent have a 48th trimester abortion if their teenage disappoints them? What if that child is mentally handicapped, and thus "couldn't survive outside the womb on its own."?

I don't remember hearing a very good answer to either of these extreme points. Yet both are just a point I've chosen on a very long line. If anyone is very, very comfortable with their own point on the abortion timeline (1 month, 15 weeks, 20 weeks, never, etc.), I'd like to hear your thoughts on why your point in time is less crazy than my 2 points in time.