How to Prevent Eugenic Abortions

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Biology
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive, where life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following phenomena:

Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.

Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.

Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.

Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.

Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.

Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.

Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

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^ I been looking everywhere for that ^

Question I believe was should we make aborting "life" illegal, all depends on how you view it, well here is the guide to life.

Discuss.

I'm prochoice.

I'm not getting a hysterectomy because
1) Too expensive
2) Too risky
3) People just can't walk in off the street and demand one; you need a really good reason for it.
4) I still want to have a natural body, despite not wanting to have children. Having your lady parts removed to me seems like multination.

I don't really want to get pregnant because I don't cope well with pain and I'm still dependent on others so I really don't want to raise a child while I'm like this. Adoption is not an option because like I said I don't take pain well. I drug up every time my monthly comes along and I have severe pains. Do not want to feel that for 9 months.
I do use protection and if there are any slip ups I will take the morning after pill. I don't think I'd ever be at a stage where I'd need to get an abortion. But right now I can't see myself as being a parent. I'm still a child myself. And with all the hard times I had in life I wouldn't want to bring a child in this world and have a repeat of that.

A lot of people are saying it's ok as long as the woman was raped but what if it was a matter of life and death? Now I may be a survivor of such things and it was recommended I be aborted because they thought I'd be stillborn, but medicine had gone a long way since then and there are steps to save the child and mother in this case, but if it were putting the mothers life at risk I would think an abortion would be a good option.

There are many reasons why i'm prochoice or whatever anyone wants to call a person who supports abortion rights. I will not say that intelligent prolifers like many of the ones in this group don't make some sound arguments against abortion. I myself have wrestled with the issue for years, but at some point, one must make a decision.

For me.... morality is about suffering and an individual's conscious will to live, not just the self-preservation instinct all living things share. If a human being cannot even understand they exist until 18 months after birth, I hardly think a fetus can consciously determine whether it wants to live or not. OK....well neither can 9 month-old infant right? But the 9-month-old infant is not longer dependant on another person's body for life support. And ofcourse....there are severely disabled adults who probably cannot consciously determine whether they want to live or not. So the question now becomes whether or not we should be forcing people to sustain the lives of others who cannot survive without assistance if they refuse to willing sustain them. This is not an easy question to answer, but IMO, it once again goes back suffering and the individual's conscious will to live. In terms of physical and psychological suffering per se, it's obviously easy enough to end a human life without much, if any, of either. But I think we should err on the side of caution when it comes to human beings 18 months of age or older. That is....we should assume that even profoundly disabled people over this age retain a conscious will to live even if there is no way they can express it to others.

So what about the child who between a few seconds old and 18 months? Is it morally acceptable to euthanize them since we could do so painlessly and since, if they're not even self-aware, they can't make a conscious decision as to whether they wish to live or not? I would say it would be IF no one is willing to support. This is never the case however, if one or two individuals can't be found to support the life of the infant, the taxpayers have obviously collectively agreed to do so. In the case of the fetus.....we would ALWAYS be forcing someone to support it's existence were abortion criminalized. Furthermore, we would be forcing someone to do so with their own body, not just their wallet. There exists a conflict of interest between the pregant women and the fetus and this again goes back to suffering. We ought to ask who will suffer more, the fetus being aborted or a women forced to give birth.

As for the issue of fetal pain, this is from JAMA:


"Context Proposed federal legislation would require physicians to inform women seeking abortions at 20 or more weeks after fertilization that the fetus feels pain and to offer anesthesia administered directly to the fetus. This article examines whether a fetus feels pain and if so, whether safe and effective techniques exist for providing direct fetal anesthesia or analgesia in the context of therapeutic procedures or abortion.

Evidence Acquisition Systematic search of PubMed for English-language articles focusing on human studies related to fetal pain, anesthesia, and analgesia. Included articles studied fetuses of less than 30 weeks’ gestational age or specifically addressed fetal pain perception or nociception. Articles were reviewed for additional references. The search was performed without date limitations and was current as of June 6, 2005.

Evidence Synthesis Pain perception requires conscious recognition or awareness of a noxious stimulus. Neither withdrawal reflexes nor hormonal stress responses to invasive procedures prove the existence of fetal pain, because they can be elicited by nonpainful stimuli and occur without conscious cortical processing. Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks. For fetal surgery, women may receive general anesthesia and/or analgesics intended for placental transfer, and parenteral opioids may be administered to the fetus under direct or sonographic visualization. In these circumstances, administration of anesthesia and analgesia serves purposes unrelated to reduction of fetal pain, including inhibition of fetal movement, prevention of fetal hormonal stress responses, and induction of uterine atony.

Conclusions Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. Little or no evidence addresses the effectiveness of direct fetal anesthetic or analgesic techniques. Similarly, limited or no data exist on the safety of such techniques for pregnant women in the context of abortion. Anesthetic techniques currently used during fetal surgery are not directly applicable to abortion procedures".


http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/294/8/947



So the limits of the evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain suggests that pain perception is merely UNLIKELY before the third trimester and thus not entirely outside the realm of possibility. Well...let's assume the fetus can feel a significant amount of pain prior to the third trimester. Would that in itself be a good reason to criminalize abortion? If physical pain alone is all we're worried about, i'd actually say it would be a good reason to be PRO-ABORTION because surely every human being will feel far more physical pain (both in terms of quality and quanity) between birth and death than a fetus will ever feel during an abortion procedure. Why should a fetus be exempt from physical pain when none of us who are out of the womb are?

All this being said.....I feel the suffering of the women forced to give birth will always be greater than the suffering of a fetus undergoing an abortion procedure. Even if her suffering is merely emotional, the fetus being aborted suffers little or no pain of any sort during the abortion. Thus the conflict of interest here is decided in favor of the pregnant women IMO.

And as for this issue of the "selfishness" of women who "murder" their fetus, I think that's just emotionally-loaded sentimental nonsense. First of all....I see every reason to believe that ALL human beings naturally possess SOME degree of rational self-interest. "Selfishness" is not always an unqualified evil and last time I checked, prolifers like the OP don't have a lock on absolute truth in this regard or any other. What about in desperate poverty who insists on giving birth because she's prolife and because she "wants a baby"? If a women who chooses to abort simply because she doesn't want stretch marks or something is "selfish", then why isn't the women who brings forth another life into very hard cirumstances equally, if not more, "selfish"?

Furthermore....aside from religious/spiritual reasons, (which I, respectively, do not share) i'll never really understand why prolifers seem to believe that every single human being who COULD be born SHOULD be born. Is there a logical, non-religious/spirtual reason for this because I just can't think of one? Billions of humans in this world will know little else but suffering in there lives. And whether anyone wants to agree with me or not, I believe we (not to mention the environment ) are ALL suffering from the number of humans on this planet already. Is there some reason women in the most hellish parts of the developing world SHOULD be giving birth considering what their offspring will most likely endure in their own lives? What is the point of being thrown into a world of such misery especially when it's already overpopulated in this first place? Who, aside from perhaps the women who wants a child (and who may live to regret it) is really gaining from all this pointless procreation? I am not blaming these poor women or calling them "selfish", but still, shouldn't we consider the circumstances a child will most likely be born into before we unequivocally believe they SHOULD be born? The Catholic church doesn't consider them at all. I have to wonder if the bowels of hell themselves would be an unsuitable place for procreation in the eyes of the Vatican.


Aside from all this....it seems rather naive to think abortion would end, or maybe even significantly decrease, if it were criminalized again. With all our technology and law enforcement resources, we don't even seem to be able to prevent tons of narcotics from flowing over our borders every year. Do we really need to create yet another black market here? Would doing so REALLY be worth it in the eyes of prolifers especially considering an untold number of women would still find a way to obtain an abortion? Women would become like illicit drug users and those willing to provide abortions would become like drug dealers and runners. Both groups would get creative and be just as elusive to law enforcement.

Thus...if prolifers really are serious about stopping abortion, they better be willing prove to women that it's no longer necessary. They ought to be serious about education, greater access to birth control, reducing poverty, etc.....To be fair....i'm sure many like Callista are quite serious about all this and plenty of prolifers are about as well-intentioned as human beings get. But prolifers like the OP seem to believe that crimalization alone would be the solution. Well.....i'm afraid that didn't work with alcohol, it hasn't worked with drugs or prostitution and it wouldn't work with abortion either.

As for the issue of "eugenic abortion"...I really draw no distinctions between that and abortion for any other reason. Like I said in my first post on this thread....I believe pregnant women alone have the right to decide whether to give birth or not. They and they alone ought to have the right to abort at any time, for any reason and the whole thing is neither my business nor anyone else's.

In any case, if I was prolife, i'd probably view the issue as a lost cause by now. I hardly think Obama is going to nominate another Antonin Scalia to replace John Paul Stevens. And ofcourse, even in the very unlikely event that Roe v. Wade is overturned some time in the coming decades, the issue would simply go back to the states. Surely this would represent a victory for the prolife movement, but it would be something just short of a pyrrhic one IMO. After all.... I can't imagine even the most unrealistic prolifer believes there will ever be a constitutional amendment which would ban the practice on the federal level.

I'm "prochoice", but I'm not pro-selective.

Down's, ASDs, flat feet, ugliness, {insert something "unappealing" here} and/or whatnot, are just as worthy of life as anyone else.

That's detectable brain activity, though. A fetus is very small, and has to be measured through a woman's body. And the electrical activity has to be synchronized enough to actually be detected--otherwise it cancels itself out and all you get on your EEG is static. The brain itself forms much earlier, and that means living brain cells exist long before 20 weeks. For one thing, reflex movements require coordinated firing of neurons, and that happens at something like six weeks.

Yes, the existence of chimeras and conjoined twins does extend the separate individual criterion out by a couple of days. Those things can happen a little later than regular twinning.

You do realize, of course, that we're looking at philosophy here--not medicine. Medicine can't even fully define "life"; so how do you expect it to define either its beginning or its end? Not that your philosophers don't have to know their medicine to discuss it properly, of course.