@TheMiddleWay once you are a '"parent" the rules change Massively!

@TheMiddleWay It will if it gets legislatively mandated, that's her point.

@TheMiddleWay Telling someone they can't do something with the threat of punishment doesn't mean they can freely ignore you, so it's not at all the same thing as "anyone can tell anyone what to do". Don't be intellectually dishonest.

@TheMiddleWay I know abortions will continue to happen, but claiming that you can ignore an abortion ban the same way you can ignore a random person "telling anyone what to do" is dishonest.

@TheMiddleWay Anne said you can't tell people what to do for 9 months let alone 20 years. You flippantly said anyone can tell anyone what to do. But telling someone what to do as a random person on the street and legislating what someone can do are two COMPLETELY different things. If you didn't understand that after what she said and my multiple clarifications of it, then you're not a liar, but I am worried about you.

@TheMiddleWay
"Not when it comes to their asking and your executing: in both cases, you have the freedom to accept or deny said request."
No. Just no. It's the difference between asking someone to do something and asking them to do it with a gun to their head. That is what she was talking about.

And I am genuinely concerned. I've debated you a thousand times, and this does seem a little beyond your "usual Middlewayness". I'm wasn't trying to call you a liar, I'm sorry you took it that way, but more like you were answering a different, very literal version of the question even though you really knew what she meant. I wouldn't call that a lie, personally.

@TheMiddleWay
So @AnneWimsey, was I off base? Or was my assessment of what you meant and how he mistook it spot on?

I don't think my "flavor" is topic dependent, so I haven't considered that. My flavor is: what makes sense that I can logically support. Is it logically consistent with my other beliefs.

@JeffMurray he is Willfully Obtuse, what else can one conclude?
I early on in this thread answered his question about when life begins, based 100% on the Babble, and got.....crickets.
As it is written, "You can lead a horse to water...."

@TheMiddleWay
"Because I don't consider an embryo a parasite."
Regardless of whether you consider it a parasite, it's still a parasitic relationship.

"And according to DNA, it is not the mothers body."
You're splitting hairs, because I'm obviously taking about the woman's body and only the woman's body, but fine. Then if they're so separate, you shouldn't have any problem with a prrgnant woman wanting to take an abortifacient into her body, or get a hysterectomy to remove her uterus from her body. If you do, then you're saying the fetus' has greater rights over the woman's body than the woman does.

"That is one possibility that isn't talked about"
I don't know why this isn't the only thing that's talked about. No other argument matters. And there are very clear examples one could use to show why this is the most important factor. Here's one:

You awaken after a drunken night out to find yourself in bed with a famous soccer player. He has a fatal blood infection, and his fan club has discovered that you have the right antibodies to cure him. They have kidnapped you, and connected your blood supplies together so your immune system can fight his infection. If he's surgically disconnected from you he will die, but if he stays connected to you for 9 months before being separated, he will live. Does the soccer player have rights to your body making you obliged to stay connected to him for 9 months regardless of what you want?

This is more adequately a parallel for pregnancy resultant from rape, but the premise stands: who has more claim to the woman's body, the self-sufficient woman herself, or the fetus that's living in her and off her? Furthermore, if we were to argue this morally (as you seem want to do) either it's immoral to abort or it's not. If it is, the cause of the pregnancy (consensual vs rape) should be irrelevant. So, since we should still allow a woman to abort to satisfy her bodily autonomy [at least in the case of rape] then it follows that the morality (regardless of whether we've even determined abortion is in fact immoral) of the issue is irrelevant to determining what should be legal.

@TheMiddleWay
It doesn't matter if scientists call it a parasite (which some do, I just Googled it and saw that exact phrasing in a research study from Cambridge) because it's still essentially a parasitic relationship. Anyway, I don't know why you're stuck on this tangent, it doesn't influence or advance either of our arguments. I'm not claiming you should be allowed to abort a fetus because it's a parasite, so we can probably stop arguing about whether or not it's a parasitic relationship.

"Hence that a woman drinks an aborticide rather than having a doctor extract the fetus/embryo doesn't change the issue of personhood which I feel is at the core of the issue"

Was this thought unfinished? There's no punctuation and the intent of the preceding sentence is unknown. Are you saying that abortifacient drugs are acceptable because the woman should be allowed to take whatever medicines she wants into her own body? I assume that would have to be your stance because you said a woman could have her uterus removed with a fetus inside and that would be okay.

As for the soccer player, all you did was parrot what I had already conceded, and then ignore all of the reasoning why it is applicable to the rest of pregnancies, most notibly why what is moral (if we can even determine that) should not be a basis for what is legal. This also brings up another issue. Are you only arguing what is moral here? Because "My body, my choice" has NOTHING to do with mortality, only legality. Women aren't marching so that people will all think it's moral for them to abort. They are marching so that they can have the option to abort. If I could concede we all call it immoral as long as it becomes permanently, irrevocably, completely legal to abort with no restrictions, I'm in. To me that's no different than our women being allowed to walk around with their faces and heads uncovered while it's deemed immoral in other parts of the world. Essentially, I don't care what people I don't care about think about what I want, I only care if they can affect me as a result.

One more tangent: responsibility in creation of the fetus shouldn't have bearing on whether or not you're forced to be financially responsible for he resultant child. Safe-haven laws allow a parent to relinquish control and responsibility for a child. Since men have exactly 0% control over whether or not a child gets aborted or carried to term, there's no appreciable reason why they shouldn't at least be allowed to exercise their right to essentially "safe-haven" the child to the woman. If the women doesn't want to raise it alone [without your money] she can also exercise that right and turn the child over to the state. This is even more reasonable considering our court system has consistently upheld the notion that it is not within their purview to determine how the woman came to be pregnant with the man's child, only that she is. Thus, if a woman steals a used condom (or as it was in the litigated case, the woman was given a used condom by the man's wife) and impregnates herself with it, the man is still responsible. That's a huge, bullshit double standard.

@TheMiddleWay

"It matters in understanding your viewpoint if your viewpoint is contrary to scientific consensus though."

I'll say it more clearly: my viewpoint doesn't care if it's a technical parasite, something behaving in a parasitic manner, completely neutral, or even symbiotic in nature. A woman should not be forced to provide for a thing growing inside her for any reason whatsoever.

'Re-read what you originally wrote: you made no mention of her removing her uterus with a embryo or fetus inside."

Re-read what you originally read, apparently I made a typographical error, but it's still fairly obviously that I said 'a pregnant woman'.

"Not ignored. I addressed directly why I thought the example didn't apply, namely that you were not responsible for giving the soccer player the disease and thus there is no reason to hold you responsible for it."
Which addresses the morality of the issue. You are saying that you should be legally responsible because you were morally culpable for the creation of the fetus. I showed why the morality shouldn't be the basis for the legality, thus, the principle applies to all pregnancies, not just rape.

"Which means that if they make abortions legal, then that's that and it's legal..."

Yes, but your OP was asking about "My body, my choice." If we agree that should be the standard, then abortion wouldn't be made legal or illegal based on who's in power. The Left isn't ever saying, "Your body, not your choice," only the Right is. Your claim about vaccines (or masks, whatever) was already pointed out to be a false equivalency by several people.

"After all, there can be no equality when one party can become pregnant but they other cannot."

I'm not asking for it to be equal, I'm asking for it to be fair.

"admit that it's alive to satisfy those that think that way. And yes, admit that it's killing them. But at the same time admit that it's for the greater good of the individual and society for that baby to be killed."

I'm fine with all that, and I think most women are too. Call it whatever the fuck you want, as long as you don't turn me into a forced incubator. I may take issue with the phrasing if it's then used to try to justify capital punishment, the stark difference being that you don't have to force a particular person to care for them for them to continue living.

@TheMiddleWay An embryo meets every definition of a parasite, and a pretty vicious one at that...can & will deprive its host of calcium, hemoglobin, etc etc etc.
Compare to a tapeworm & tell me the actual difference. Hint: there is None! Otherwise you are just injecting your "feelings" into what you Claim is a scientific debate, which is the very definition of dishonesty!

@TheMiddleWay I Googled "parasite definition" and none of the definitions on the first page of results specified it had to be a different species. What source are you using for this definition?

@TheMiddleWay
"What we found next was most unusual. It appeared the placental NKB contained the molecule phosphocholine which is used by filarial nematodes, a type of parasitic worms to escape host immune systems! I have had two or three 'Eureka!' moments in my career. This one, at 63, I am happy to bow out on."

The human foetus and placenta have a different genotype from the mother. The foetus has been described before as acting in a parasitic way: it avoids rejection by the mother and exerts considerable influence over her metabolism for its own benefit, in particular diverting blood and nutrients. Now it would appear the similarities go much further. Although the mode of attachment of the phosphocoline (PC) is different in the mammalian placenta, its presence is startling.

"When we saw this, our immediate instinct was to look at other proteins in the placenta. So far, from what we have seen, it appears a large number of them possess this cell surface molecule which cloaks them from the host immune system," Lowry continued.

[reading.ac.uk]

.

"It may be concluded, therefore, that on a low plane of nutrition, the foetus lives as a parasite, the tissues of the foetus having a prior claim on the nutrients circulating in the maternal blood"

[cambridge.org]

You found one source that mentions two species. Here are research articles that detail scientific reasons how the fetus acts in a parasitic manner. You sure there's a scientific consensus??

@TheMiddleWay
First of all, definitions of parasites from your own source do not list parasite as necessarily detrimentally harmful, so your conclusion that we should eliminate all of them does not follow logically.
Secondly, I never said it was a parasite, I described the relationship as parasitic. The research articles describe a parasitic relationship, so I disagree my description was inaccurate.
Finally, it may be uncomfortable for people, but I guess that wouldn't be unlike me agreeing to call abortion 'killing a person' as long as it remains perfectly legal...

@TheMiddleWay A G A I N . . . I'm not saying it IS a parasite, I said it was parasitic in nature, and the literature apparently DOES support that.

And no, those views aren't consistent based on the reasoning I gave to allow abortion, (that a woman should be allowed bodily autonomy) as bodily autonomy does not give you just cause to kill a prisoner.

And of course, as I stated before, it doesn't matter if it's a person or a life or whatever else you want to call it.

@TheMiddleWay
I guess I have to paste this again...

"What we found next was most unusual. It appeared the placental NKB contained the molecule phosphocholine which is used by filarial nematodes, a type of parasitic worms to escape host immune systems! I have had two or three 'Eureka!' moments in my career. This one, at 63, I am happy to bow out on."

The human foetus and placenta have a different genotype from the mother. The foetus has been described before as acting in a parasitic way: it avoids rejection by the mother and exerts considerable influence over her metabolism for its own benefit, in particular diverting blood and nutrients. Now it would appear the similarities go much further. Although the mode of attachment of the phosphocoline (PC) is different in the mammalian placenta, its presence is startling.

"When we saw this, our immediate instinct was to look at other proteins in the placenta. So far, from what we have seen, it appears a large number of them possess this cell surface molecule which cloaks them from the host immune system," Lowry continued.

[reading.ac.uk]

.

"It may be concluded, therefore, that on a low plane of nutrition, the foetus lives as a parasite, the tissues of the foetus having a prior claim on the nutrients circulating in the maternal blood"

[cambridge.org]

@TheMiddleWay
So, end result:
Do we agree your initial question/premise in one of these posts about 'my body, my choice' was based on a false equivalency?
Do we agree people can call the abortion of fetuses whatever they want, but there's no justification for restricting access to it because none of the pro-life arguments supercede bodily autonomy?
And we can't agree that my phrasing was fair as far as parasitic, even though you said, "Of the 252 hits you'll get, you will find many papers that draw correlation between pregnancy and parasites" which I believe is all I was doing too AND it's completely irrelevant to my argument. But instead of focusing on the part of my argument that destroys the pro-life/women become forced incubators argument, you ran down the parasite tangent as if winning that point invalidated my argument.

@TheMiddleWay

By northern Europe, I meant what was traditionally referred to as northern Europe: Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands. All have well developed social systems.

Abortion was never an issue in Poland when it was socialist. When Communism collapsed there, so did access to the health system, which took on capitalist aspects. It's well known that throughout the ex-Communist European countries, the social system has deteriorated leaving people more insecure and more prone to backward religious or fascist nationalist impulses. Ireland has always been economically backward until fairly recently. It is this fairly recent development that has led to abortion restrictions being challenged there.

You are ignoring the countries with low levels of education that have had revolutionary governments that have been able to remove abortion as an issue and provide this right to women. When people have access to free health care and economic security, they are not diverted to religious issues like abortion or a fascist nationalism.

The debate is where we as a nation, draw the line. Will pregnancy tests become illegal? Where is the cut off point access. Currently it is viability. But each state can decide where that line is. Mississippi is proposing 15 weeks. At 6 weeks a woman or her doctor may not be able to confirm . "ya can't abort a fetus at 8 &1/2 months. Its viable. At 3 months or 12 weeks? Can she afford the fee?

@TheMiddleWay I do not think it's slim. Judging from what was said during oral arguments, I think abortion will be illegal in many areas of the country by next summer. So much so that I'm considering buying a shit ton of plan B in May.

@TheMiddleWay The immorality of imposing restrictions on abortions is not undetermined. Women are all too familiar with the consequences, sickness, death, impoverishment, which they usually bear alone. But this indifference or outright hostility against women fully fits with the abuse and hatred Christian religion holds for women, and which they, in their moral wisdom, ignore.

@TheMiddleWay That may be but until it becomes viable it is only a potential. self-sustaining, independent life form. Seems like there is some splitting hairs here.
I found another definition of life. [lifemattersww.org]

@TheMiddleWay The big problem is it's just another way of the religious right's way of asserting their power. Going through my older issues of FFRF newsletter I came across an editorial by Bryan Bolton "God is so not 'pro-life." If you're interested here's the article. Basically the religious fanatics have no platform. It's just about power. [ffrf.org]

@TheMiddleWay Yes, there are those opposed to abortion (mostly men) and yes, there are those that do so not for religious reasons. But the Fact is, it is the religious zealots and their money that is the driving force behind the present situation.

@TheMiddleWay
“Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”
In what way exactly is a fetus "self-sustaining"?

@TheMiddleWay Until it is born, and outside her body, it is not a person protected by laws against murder.
Nor should it ever be.
The laws currently on the books regarding that issue are 100% wrong and need to be repealed.

As long as it's inside a woman's body, it is 100% reliant upon her. Likening it to a parasite. Whether it stays or goes should never be up to anyone else but her.

Everything else is sentimental claptrap.
Morality is subjective.
Religion should NEVER have any status in making decisions for everyone.

Men should never have ANY say in what any woman chooses to do about her own body.
No argument will ever change that.

@TheMiddleWay You make some good points.

Your Quote: "the baby was put there by her choice to have sex."

Not necessarily, and I'm not just talking about rape or incest. There is a whole world of reasons for an abortion.

Also, the man has equal responsibility for the pregnancy, and yet the woman bears the entire burden of gestation and - very often - most or all of the burden of a lifetime of caring for the child. That means the woman and her own life are ALWAYS an essential moral factor to consider in the abortion decision. Yet she and her life are routinely ignored by anti-choicers, who focus their moral argument almost exclusively on the fetus.

I don't believe that a first trimester or second trimester fetus is morally equivalent to a born person. The embryo/fetus develops gradually from an insensate lump of cells to a baby. I wouldn't expect there to be any clearcut demarcation of when it becomes a "person" or when it has equal moral status with a born person. But anti-choicers see things in simplistic black and white terms.

@TheMiddleWay
"But making a decision for your DNA (blood tissue organs) is not the same as making a decision for another's DNA (fetus)."
You keep saying this as if people need to do something other than to their own body to abort. If I want to scrape the inside of my uterus (or take a pill), I should be allowed. If that explants a fetus, then too bad for that fetus (provided that fetus would have survived gestation and would have grown into a person that was happy they were born, which not everyone is). But in any case, it's no different than if I want to run my hand down my arm rapidly. If your wrist happens to break because you were grabbing on to me, too bad for you, you shouldn't have been grabbing me.

And I'll even Ironman the argument and you could say, "But you can't break the wrist if you invited someone to grab your arm." To which I'd reply, "You can if you tell the person to stop touching you." To which you might say, "But you can't tell a fetus to stop touching you." And I'd say, "Sure you can, it's not your fault they don't have a brain or ears yet, or even the ability/volition to let go, but that shouldn't change one's ability to exercise bodily autonomy because of it did, that would mean the fetus would be exercising rights over the woman's body or "making decisions for her DNA instead of just their own" which you are clearly against. So if one has to go over the line (if that's how you want to characterize it), it should be the one that's not dependent on the other.

@TheMiddleWay You did it again. I Ironmanned your argument for you and you still just parroted what I had already conceded then didn't respond to the follow up. What is going on with you lately? If I invited you to hold my arm, then asked you to stop, you didn't stop, and in an attempt to get you to stop I injured you, I would not be liable for your injuries.

@TheMiddleWay
"Clearly to you is not clearly to me"
Well, you've consistently and repeatedly made the argument regarding doing something to another's DNA. So whatever your beliefs/lack there of, that has been the point/side you've been arguing.

I'm of the "No harm, no foul" camp.

...Any useful definition of "personhood" must include a capacity to experience...And if a person cannot experience physical pain, then how could they suffer an abortion?

An abortion performed before pain and suffering can be experienced is not immoral if we define morality in a way that includes causing suffering.

I've been asked how I would feel if I were aborted. The answer is simple: I wouldn't.

@TheMiddleWay
My own quote: "...within the scope where we reasonably differ."

I'm comfortable that there is a consensus that rape and murder are wrong. Clearly, there is nowhere near any such consensus regarding abortion, even among the religious.