But it does, so the question is what we do about it. In order to ascertain that, we have to make a value judgement. I’m not terribly opposed to it before the growing fetus gains any semblance of sentience - it’s a human life, to be sure, but one that’s unaware, so I can make a reasonable concession. The bridge we shouldn’t cross is equating abortion with contraception - it isn’t contraception, it’s an emergency procedure, one that should be avoided if human life has any meaning to us at all. Morning after pills are widely available - those alone give a woman 72 hours to react. If the current rules are any indication, after that fact she still has a couple weeks to react. There comes a point at which the pregnancy becomes so advanced that we cross the threshold between dealing with one sentient human and two sentient humans - what then? The bodily autonomy perspective recognises that the woman should have the right to terminate up to 5 minutes before birth if that is her fancy, but I fail to see how that’s different than infanticide unless we assume that the opening of her vagina is a magical portal that grants personhood upon exit, which is ridiculous. At some point we have to recognise the bodily autonomy of the body growing inside her, maybe even its personhood, which is a difficult balancing act. It’s the crossroads of philosophy and biology, bioethics can be tricky.
I'm not sure you can compare car accidents to unwanted pregnancies, but let's try to make the comparison as fair as possible. Let's say you're obeying traffic laws and minding your own business when somebody crashes into your car. It's not your fault, so insurance pays for the damages, and your premiums do not increase. Everyone is required to carry auto insurance to account for situations such as this. The woman would be you in this example, and the rapist would be the person who crashes into you. Does this mean women need to carry rapist insurance so that if they get raped, the insurance will pay out enough money to support them through the pregnancy and the next 18 years? I don't think that's a viable solution. It honestly sounds pretty dystopian.
In the insurance model, you're already burdened with the consequences of somebody else's failure to drive safely. Premiums are set so the insurance company can make money, and people who drive safely pay into the system to help people who get into accidents, because they could one day be the person who's in an accident. If you're never in an accident, you could argue that it's unfair for you to have to pay auto insurance premiums, but if everyone who didn't get into accidents didn't pay premiums, then the concept of insurance wouldn't work anymore since insurance companies would go out of business.
Well, it’s either the woman’s problem or “my” problem. More collectively, “our” problem, that we have to tend to as a society. Someone’s responsible, yes?
Slow down, Stretch Armstrong - we’re not talking about insurance, we’re talking about establishing responsibility for the accident, which is a traffic law concept. Either you’re at fault or someone else hit you. It theoretically could be an act of God (meaning an accident beyond anyone’s control) but I think we can rule out immaculate conception, so we don’t really need to touch upon that.
Rape insurance sure sounds like taxation, considering we pay taxes to fund the police. They’re supposed to keep rapists off the streets, and for the most part, they do. They can’t catch everyone. As @tabzer mentioned above, you’ve stepped outside of the confines of the analogy, but we can keep stretching if that’s what you desire. It’s not productive, but can be mildly entertaining as a mental exercise.
You don't have to accept abortions. You just need to understand that they're going to keep happening regardless of the law because you can't just take away someone's rights and expect everyone to fall in line.
I wasn't suggesting we enact a single law, which applies to all, to cater explicitly to the rape victim group. I said it's relevant to the debate. It's a real issue that's directly related to the abortion discussion. It should be taken into consideration with regards to the laws. Laws certainly allow for nuance and exceptions, so I don't think your rebuttal is compatible with my point. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, so feel free to help me better understand what you mean by that policy comment.
The 2% figure actually includes both rape and incest - not sure where you’re getting your 5% from. My data comes from the Guttmacher Institute which performs surveys nationwide about this very topic with healthcare institutions. Not that it really matters, we’re splitting hairs - the point was that the number of these exceptional cases is infinitesimally small and, in my opinion, constitutes a different discussion altogether as we’re talking about remedy from a crime rather than a personal reproductive choice. I don’t have a problem with abortion after rape - the child would only serve as a reminder of the traumatic experience. As long as it hasn’t crossed the threshold we talked about earlier, you’ll hear no objections from me.
I guess I don't see what your point is. The only way I can see how somebody else's pregnancy can become a collective problem is if a) abortion is always illegal and b) the rest of us are forced to pay taxes to help women raise children they never wanted. Unless the second condition is true, somebody else's pregnancy is never "our" problem, at least not directly.
*Sorry for the crazy long post - I'm trying to respond to more than one user here at a time and could have formatted this better. Forgive me.
I wouldn't call 25,000 - 30,000 people small. You could fill 8+ stadiums with these victims every year. This is approaching vehicle accident deaths (~38,000 in 2020). Therefore I feel strongly that it should be addressed as part of the discussion. Representing these people with a percentage makes it far more easy to disassociate with the real size and scope of the problem everyone has been tasked with answering.
I'd argue that what you are proposing is not a different discussion, but a different take depending on the context - allowing for nuance to the discussion of abortion. That would simply be moving the discussion in one direction to address that scenario. Your viewpoint should be able to withstand any real scenarios I throw at you. The goal isn't to have the "correct" viewpoint - it's for it to be as sound and convincing as possible & let us see where you're coming from so we can get to a compromise or agreement, since we will have different core philosophical views (you and I went over that in another Politemp thread previously). Bringing up these cases is effective in arguing for abortion, because it challenges the viewpoint that this is "murdering a baby". It's brought up to make you truly consider what you feel is human by bringing up a scenario that puts your view to the test. I'm arguing that pushing this "insignificance" issue absolutely belongs in the discussion of abortion.
The brain activity/consciousness angle, right?
Arguing over a 3% of a difference while there’s 95-98% of a remainder to worry about is a waste of time, for the reasons I’ve already stated. How many stadiums do the remaining abortions fill? Is this some kind of misdirection? I’m not going to count droplets on a leaf while I’m standing next to a lake, it’s simply not productive.
The problem with your examples is that killing somebody in self defense is not murder. Murder is the premeditated killing of another person. Killing somebody in self defense does not require you to formulate a plan to kill the person ahead of time. That's why there are legal terms such as first/second degree murder, as well as (in)voluntary manslaughter. If somebody attacks you and you fight back, your primary motivation is not dying, and you take whatever action you think in the moment will prevent that outcome. Sometimes the action you take will kill the attacker, and sometimes it won't, but it's not murder if the attacker happens to die while you're trying to save your own life.
I disagree. If you're going to formulate a set of rules for when abortion is allowed (if ever) and when it is not, the rules need to cover every possible circumstance for how a woman could become pregnant so you know ahead of time what the abortion rules are in that case.
No, we enjoy giving the mothers the freedom to make the choice on whether it's a viable course to raise the baby or not. You shouldn't have to strip the rights of one being in order for another to have some. There's enough rights for everyone.
You're right - there's reasons "killing" gets grouped into degrees and other crimes like "manslaughter". It's the logic of the examples that really matters. Adding nuance to move the discussion forward was the point of that bit.
Disagree, for reasons already stated twice. Nobody is basing general rules on outliers. In fact, outliers are specifically eliminated from any statistical analysis. Exceptional circumstances are covered by exceptions.
A very good point - one that ties directly to what I’ve been arguing all along. It would be *ludicrous* to use the same measuring stick for premeditated murder, accidental manslaughter and criminal negligence resulting in death just because they all boil down to a death of a human. Similarly, it is asinine to treat elective abortion, abortion for medical reasons and abortion in the event of rape as one and the same, applying the same rule that covers 100% of abortions. Those three things *are not alike*, and treating them as the same thing only wastes time on otherwise unnecessary mental gymnastics.
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But other than PC and Amiga ports I don't think Time Soldiers had any game system ports after...
