When does pro-choice become pro-abortion?

[Zzarchov]

Why would a miscarriage result in an investigation anymore than an abortion would? If you're granting a woman the sole right to her body and to decide the path of her fetus, then she has the right to miscarry, stand on chairs, whatever. It's her body, right?

It seems you're granting status to the fetus, rather than to the mother.

If you don't grant status to the fetus, than it cannot by definition be murder. You can't murder a thing, you can murder a person.

If you are going to charge someone with murder (rather than another form of violent charge) with all that entails in our legal system it has to be for killing a person.

Its not Anti-Choice to treat a fetus like a fetus and not charge someone with murder for causing a miscarriage.

Making a choice does not involve rewriting reality for everyone else. Unless you are going to declare a fetus a person (and all that entails) you can't charge someone with murder for causing a miscarriage.

There is already penalties and punishments in place for causing a miscarriage, murder is not a general catch all crime to be bandied about.

 

[Just the Facts]

One of these days I'm going to muster up the courage to go to a pro-life rally with a bunch of volunteer forms for ward children's agencies. I'm not going to just pass them out either, I'm going to stand there while they fill out the form. If they refuse, you can guess what I plan to do with their "where have all the children gone?" sign!! 8)

Just some background - in my younger days I worked with handicapped and "emotionally disturbed" kids. Believe me, society has abondoned these children. We were practically begging in the streets for big brother / sister type vilunteers to spend some time with kids....role model and make them feel like they matter. Even just a couple of hours a month!!! Take them to a movie every fourth Sunday would have been great.

There were some excellent volunteers I met over the years but I could count them on one hand.

That's why I'm pro-life AND pro-choice. I get ENRAGED when I see those "where have all the children gone?" signs. I appreciate the good intent of the pro-lifers but their grip on reality is non-existant. They're all for the sanctity of life....as long as nurturing that life is someone else's problem.

End of rant. 8)

 

[karrie]

End of rant. 8)

Perhaps you might want to read the OP and weigh in on the actual issue?

 

[Outta here]

- the outcome would inevitably impact the validity of any other laws pertaining to the voluntary cessation of pregnancy.

See, I just don't get why it would. It seems ridiculous to me.

PRO-CHOICE.

If we have chosen as a country to stand for a woman's right to decide, then we ought to actually stand for it. It doesn't have to have anything to do with granting the 'fetus' rights, and everything with honoring the choice of the mother. Why is it such a hard thing to write a law like that?

Yes Karrie, we ought to stand by the choice the woman's made. Under the circumstance of violence - whether premeditated or not - the fact that the fetus was still alive within the mother immediately prior to the event that caused the mother to either die or loose her choice to carry to term should be considered murder.

What I was trying to say is that I could see semantics and politics being thrown up as road blocks in the effort to write and define such a law causing it to take years - decades even - for something to actually be enacted.

I don't think it should be that way either Karrie, but it is. Activists can be pretty rabid in their belief that the ends justifies the means. The minute a law was passed that held someone accountable for their act of violence causing a termination of pregnancy, I really believe the pro-lifers would seize upon this as a valid and easy means to reopen the entire abortion debate.

Much like we've seen within this thread.

 

[karrie]

Yes Karrie, we ought to stand by the choice the woman's made. Under the circumstance of violence - whether premeditated or not - the fact that the fetus was still alive within the mother immediately prior to the event that caused the mother to either die or loose her choice to carry to term should be considered murder.

What I was trying to say is that I could see semantics and politics being thrown up as road blocks in the effort to write and define such a law causing it to take years - decades even - for something to actually be enacted.

I don't think it should be that way either Karrie, but it is. Activists can be pretty rabid in their belief that the ends justifies the means. The minute a law was passed that held someone accountable for their act of violence causing a termination of pregnancy, I really believe the pro-lifers would seize upon this as a valid and easy means to reopen the entire abortion debate.

Much like we've seen within this thread.

This thread has been enlightening indeed as to the way people can't look at the single aspect of the issue. My OP was practically universally ignored while people jumped into pro and anti abortion rants instead.

 

[Zzarchov]

Your OP IS the abortion debate though. You are saying you get to chose if something is alive. You can't make that choice.

It either IS a person or it is NOT a person. It is not something you just choose on a case by case basis for law. To me my pet cat is a person, that does not mean I get to choose that if you run over my cat you suffer the same penalty as if you ran over a toddler. That isn't my choice to make.

Your OP is basically saying "Treat a Fetus as a person", well..for how long? What about if you would have changed your mind?

If you don't decide to get an abortion the second you find out, could someone say "You made the choice to treat the fetus as alive under the law, ergo its a living being and you can now no longer have an abortion". If it is alive after all, you can't decide to kill your fetal child anymore than you can kill your 12 year old.

If someone causes you to lose your child, there are laws in place that do respect your choice to attempt to give life to the fetus.

The OP is nonsensical unless you take the context of making terminating your fetus the same as murder, meaning its a person, which opens up the whole can of worms.

 

[Outta here]

It's a passionate subject. I can clearly see a difference in the issues - and the question you posed in the OP made perfect sense to me - but I don't foresee folks in general untangling their emotional responses to the subject enough to tackle this from yet a third point of view as your OP asks us to do... and if a group of rational, intelligent and informed posters like we see here can't do it, I don't suppose we could reasonably expect a larger sample of Canadians to do so either.
I'm sorry your question got derailed though. Since I agree with you, I'm afraid I can't really offer you a reasonable explanation as to why the mother's choice shouldn't be considered the criteria for determining whether or not a crime has been committed in such cases.

 

[#juan]

I am neither a pro-choicer, nor a pro-lifer, but I believe it that any deliberate act that ends up terminating a planned pregnancy is either manslaughter or murder. At what point does a foetus have rights? I say at the point where we determine that foetus has a chance at viability.

 

[Zzarchov]

I can agree there should be signifigant penalty to causing the termination of a wanted pregnancy. I can agree these penalties should be equal to or greater than those of murder/manslaughter, but I cannot agree it should be murder/manslaughter.

 

[gerryh]

Just a small point.....in Canada...technically...... a woman can "choose" to abort the "fetus" right upto the birth.

 

[karrie]

I can agree there should be signifigant penalty to causing the termination of a wanted pregnancy. I can agree these penalties should be equal to or greater than those of murder/manslaughter, but I cannot agree it should be murder/manslaughter.

what sort of term would be appropriate? Fetal manslaughter is one I've heard bandied about, but again, you run the risk of angering the pro-abortionists by granting the slightest glimmer of right to a wanted pregnancy. What term could ever possibly be used sentence for the crime of intentionally ending a wanted pregnancy that wouldn't piss off the pro-choice crowd and make people jump into the abortion debate at every turn?

 

[karrie]

Just a small point.....in Canada...technically...... a woman can "choose" to abort the "fetus" right upto the birth.

Though it is a crucial point in an abortion debate, I think it's a bit irrelevant to the issue at hand. The laws concerning abortion don't apply to a woman who's chosen a pregnancy.

 

[s243a]

Your OP IS the abortion debate though. You are saying you get to chose if something is alive. You can't make that choice.

It either IS a person or it is NOT a person. It is not something you just choose on a case by case basis for law. To me my pet cat is a person, that does not mean I get to choose that if you run over my cat you suffer the same penalty as if you ran over a toddler. That isn't my choice to make.

Your OP is basically saying "Treat a Fetus as a person", well..for how long? What about if you would have changed your mind?

If you don't decide to get an abortion the second you find out, could someone say "You made the choice to treat the fetus as alive under the law, ergo its a living being and you can now no longer have an abortion". If it is alive after all, you can't decide to kill your fetal child anymore than you can kill your 12 year old.

If someone causes you to lose your child, there are laws in place that do respect your choice to attempt to give life to the fetus.

The OP is nonsensical unless you take the context of making terminating your fetus the same as murder, meaning its a person, which opens up the whole can of worms.

Forgetting the philosophical question of when human life begins if someone believes their fetus is their child what is the cost to them of losing a fetus? What comfort does the legal system provide for this loss?

 

[karrie]

If someone causes you to lose your child, there are laws in place that do respect your choice to attempt to give life to the fetus.

The OP is nonsensical unless you take the context of making terminating your fetus the same as murder, meaning its a person, which opens up the whole can of worms.

Except that current lack of abortion law (from what I can find) doesn't state in any way shape or form that a fetus isn't alive, or human, or a person. In Canada it simply states that any law restricting a woman's access to abortion infringes on her right to "life, liberty and security of person." If we haven't declared a fetus to not be a living human being, then why can't we protect its right to "life, liberty and security of person" such as is granted to it by its mother through her exercise of choice?

 

[karrie]

Forgetting the philosophical question of when human life begins if someone believes their fetus is their child what is the cost to them of losing a fetus? What comfort does the legal system provide for this loss?

what comfort does the legal system offer any parent whose child is taken violently from them?

 

[gerryh]

Though it is a crucial point in an abortion debate, I think it's a bit irrelevant to the issue at hand. The laws concerning abortion don't apply to a woman who's chosen a pregnancy.

You're the one that brought up :legal abortion.

But so often here ZZarchov, we're talking about cases where the woman is past that three month risk period, she's past the term for a legal abortion even, and is killed or has her pregnancy ended intentionally, through beatings and worse.

When abortion is no longer an option, the woman has clearly made a choice, and the life is intentionally ended through targeted agression against the pregnant woman, I see no reason why her choice shouldn't be given legal protection.

Just pointing out that in Canada there is no "term" or "no longer an option".... women can have their baby murdered at any time during their pregnancy.

 

[s243a]

what comfort does the legal system offer any parent whose child is taken violently from them?

Only the cold comfort of justice and possible money if they individual has something to sue for in civil court.

 

[karrie]

You're the one that brought up :legal abortion.




Just pointing out that in Canada there is no "term" or "no longer an option".... women can have their baby murdered at any time during their pregnancy.

true enough. thanks for pointing it out gerry.

 

[Just the Facts]

Perhaps you might want to read the OP and weigh in on the actual issue?

Naa. ;-)

 

[karrie]

Naa. ;-)

:lol: alrighty then.