UK Abortion Law
Discussion
Evanivitch said:
Quite the opposite actually.
.
So what is your position then? You are opposed to abortion but don’t have a problem with contraception?.
Or you are fine with both?
As you probably know, it’s relatively common Catholic teaching that contraception is similar in nature, as it stops a life that would otherwise become a child.
Evanivitch said:
Northernboy said:
Your argument if taken at face value implies that abortion is acceptable right up to the moment of birth.
Is that your position? If not then you agree that society has a right to draw a line somewhere before birth, and that the argument is then about where the line should be drawn.
From a deeply philosophical position, why does birth make the difference?Is that your position? If not then you agree that society has a right to draw a line somewhere before birth, and that the argument is then about where the line should be drawn.
The Wikipedia article on infantacide is interesting. Also interesting the difference in attitude to infantacide between the genders, perhaps there is a feeling amongst women that they own their babies or are tied to them in a way men don't, seems reasonable.
Someone alluded to the trolley problem above, we have an innate reaction to icky problems as humans. I'm sure many of us aren't suited to working in abattoirs but quite happy to eat bacon butties, it's a form of dishonesty but a simple human truth that the practical ickiness of an act often trumps any underlying moral or philosophical reasoning for it.
Evanivitch said:
Quite the opposite actually.
We question the validity of a premature birth because of the amount of (medical) intervention that may be required to enable that person to have a suitable quality of life. The earlier the birth, the greater the risk of long term suffering, the greater the medical interventions required.
But no human baby is born independent. They all require intervention for warmth, food, hygiene etc All children born in the UK have vaccinations, the majority will see a doctor for medication at some point in their first few years etc.
It's why many refer to the first 3 months after birth as the 4th trimester.
I would be a little careful with that argument. If it prevails, then you have established that ex-utero viability is not a valid basis to select a time limit for abortions. But it is double edged, because if it fails, and ex-utero viability is the right test, your approach gives a green light to leaving children up to perhaps four years of age in the forest or by the roadside to dispose of them. We question the validity of a premature birth because of the amount of (medical) intervention that may be required to enable that person to have a suitable quality of life. The earlier the birth, the greater the risk of long term suffering, the greater the medical interventions required.
But no human baby is born independent. They all require intervention for warmth, food, hygiene etc All children born in the UK have vaccinations, the majority will see a doctor for medication at some point in their first few years etc.
It's why many refer to the first 3 months after birth as the 4th trimester.
We aren’t Spartans, and I don’t think many of us aspire to be.
Ex-utero viability is determined by reference to factors intrinsic to the human form: can it breathe independently; will it sustain a heartbeat independently; does it have an independent digestive system, and so on. It isn’t determined by extrinsic factors such as: can it feed itself; can it forage or hunt for food itself; can it protect itself against the elements. It is the former set of criteria that Parliament took into account when setting the limit at 24 weeks in 1967.
As I think I have said previously, the rate of human foetal development will not have changed over the last 54 years. Medical means to sustain a foetus delivered earlier than 24 weeks may have, but that can - not always - with long term health problems.
BobsPigeon said:
It didn't for a long time in many cultures infantacide was practised quite widely. Still is, in some places more than others.
The Wikipedia article on infantacide is interesting. Also interesting the difference in attitude to infantacide between the genders, perhaps there is a feeling amongst women that they own their babies or are tied to them in a way men don't, seems reasonable.
Someone alluded to the trolley problem above, we have an innate reaction to icky problems as humans. I'm sure many of us aren't suited to working in abattoirs but quite happy to eat bacon butties, it's a form of dishonesty but a simple human truth that the practical ickiness of an act often trumps any underlying moral or philosophical reasoning for it.
Much of the change in attitudes and laws down the years has been moving from a system based on virtues to one based on utilitarianism. Homosexuality was viewed as a sin, or “unnatural” so was illegal but then it was argued that it harmed no-one, but the ban did cause harm, so it was repealed. It takes the “ickiness” factor out of legislation, replacing it (in theory) with a more sober view of whether something should be banned for being icky.The Wikipedia article on infantacide is interesting. Also interesting the difference in attitude to infantacide between the genders, perhaps there is a feeling amongst women that they own their babies or are tied to them in a way men don't, seems reasonable.
Someone alluded to the trolley problem above, we have an innate reaction to icky problems as humans. I'm sure many of us aren't suited to working in abattoirs but quite happy to eat bacon butties, it's a form of dishonesty but a simple human truth that the practical ickiness of an act often trumps any underlying moral or philosophical reasoning for it.
I think that we’re seeing a retreat from that in some areas now, for example in the Scottish hate crime bill, where someone not liking another’s view is enough to ban them from expressing it.
BlackWidow13 said:
Thread revival.
Whatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
To expand on this:Whatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
The SC rejected the challenge to the legislation - which, btw, makes no exception for rape or incest - by a 5-4 majority. The reasoning seems to have been (a) the time limit on abortions is unconstitutional but (b) Texas’s wrinkle of permitting anyone to sue/enforce the law made the whole thing to novel and complex to rule on. The majority’s view is that it is better to wait until an abortion clinic is sued for $10k, and then consider the matter.
Bizarre.
I would be willing to bet that had a state legislated that residents were allowed to own only a handgun and four rounds of live ammunition at any given moment in time, and that anyone in the state could sue an infringer of this law for $10k, the same majority would have struck the law down in an instant.
Whatever one may say about MPs or Judges here, I am glad that we don’t have ideologue legislators and politically appointed Judges.
BobsPigeon said:
Hyperbolic nonsense, this thread was started in good faith to discuss the legality of abortion.
In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
300 years ago women were tortured and killed for being witches.In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
The right to remain unvaccinated to the possible detriment of others is embedded in law.
BlackWidow13 said:
Thread revival.
Whatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
The USA is becoming more ridiculous, extreme and out of kilter with the developed world each day. So many of them really are truly mad as fWhatever one might think of UK abortion law, it’s a damn sight better than Texas.
Texas has passed a state law outlawing abortions at 6 weeks. And the rider is that the law grants anyone the right to sue someone who breaks the law and claim $10k. No loss required. This is simple bounty hunting written into law.
Abortion providers in Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to have the law suspended pending a full hearing. The Supreme Court declined to hear that petition and won’t step in until the matter is fully argued in 1/2/3 years.
Texas’s law is no less theocratically driven hardline Christian than the sort of theocratically driven hardline Islamic laws in Iran and Afghanistan that Americans get so heated about. It’s fricking crazy.
Be thankful for what we have here. It’s easy to overlook how good we have it.
k and the religious zealotism seems to be spreading further and further.BobsPigeon said:
Hyperbolic nonsense, this thread was started in good faith to discuss the legality of abortion.
In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
That's just rubbish from the outset. You can lawfully kill someone in legitimate defence of your own body, for starters. That's most certainly to the detriment of the dead person.In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
Your analogy doesn't apply here though as what "others" does abortion cause a detriment to? The only detriment is that some people who don't agree with it might be a bit offended and there is no right not to be offended.
eldar said:
BobsPigeon said:
Hyperbolic nonsense, this thread was started in good faith to discuss the legality of abortion.
In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
300 years ago women were tortured and killed for being witches.In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
The right to remain unvaccinated to the possible detriment of others is embedded in law.
At the risk of coming across as some sort of insane incel, which I'm definitely not, I think the idea that abortion laws are some sort of integral part of women's liberation from the yoke of patriarchal oppression is a fairly weak trope.
I think you could definitely argue that of the pill and other methods of birth control and as the cultural shift of the 60s and early 70s caused such a jamboree of new cultural freedoms it all gets mashed together with hindsight, but I'm deeply concerned that abortion should be treated as a means of birth control, and that is not the purpose of the 1967 act as far as I can tell. The purpose of the act is to prevent women suffering "harm" not suffering a pregnancy.
Several posters asking above what my argument actually is. It's partly to do with the shift in viability given medical advances, so from that point of view yes it is about dates, a reduction to 18 weeks before the higher medical requirement threshold would, I think, be more reasonable.
But more it's about the silly and dishonest ambiguity of the current UK law where we effectively have abortion on request up to 24 weeks even though that's not a reasonable reading of the law even if it is a literal and logical one, especially again given medical advances which means the risk of carrying a pregnancy full term have been massively reduced since the 1960s.
AJL308 said:
The USA is becoming more ridiculous, extreme and out of kilter with the developed world each day. So many of them really are truly mad as fk and the religious zealotism seems to be spreading further and further.
It’s not only an issue in the US though. We’ve plenty of religious zealots in Europe too, which is why we need armed guards at synagogues in France and huge barriers on bridges and around buildings in the UK.k and the religious zealotism seems to be spreading further and further.We’ve had children beheaded or otherwise killed for being “possessed”, and people driven into hiding for blasphemy crimes.
We may be looking West and seeing problems caused by religion, but they are looking right back at us and seeing the same.
Biggy Stardust said:
Bill said:
What would be your cut off?
Mine would be when the individual is capable of independent life away from the mother. It's as good a definition as any & works for my ethics.Northernboy said:
AJL308 said:
The USA is becoming more ridiculous, extreme and out of kilter with the developed world each day. So many of them really are truly mad as fk and the religious zealotism seems to be spreading further and further.
It’s not only an issue in the US though. We’ve plenty of religious zealots in Europe too, which is why we need armed guards at synagogues in France and huge barriers on bridges and around buildings in the UK.k and the religious zealotism seems to be spreading further and further.We’ve had children beheaded or otherwise killed for being “possessed”, and people driven into hiding for blasphemy crimes.
We may be looking West and seeing problems caused by religion, but they are looking right back at us and seeing the same.
BobsPigeon said:
Biggy Stardust said:
Bill said:
What would be your cut off?
Mine would be when the individual is capable of independent life away from the mother. It's as good a definition as any & works for my ethics.
AJL308 said:
BobsPigeon said:
Hyperbolic nonsense, this thread was started in good faith to discuss the legality of abortion.
In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
That's just rubbish from the outset. You can lawfully kill someone in legitimate defence of your own body, for starters. That's most certainly to the detriment of the dead person.In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
Your analogy doesn't apply here though as what "others" does abortion cause a detriment to? The only detriment is that some people who don't agree with it might be a bit offended and there is no right not to be offended.
We submit ourselves to the rule of law and as subjects of the state and forgo certain liberties and give up a certain amount of agency over our own bodies in exchange for the benefits that enlightenment civilised societies affords us.
Abortion does indeed cause terminal harm to the potential of a human life, that's without question. Where or when you consider the starting of human life to be is sort of the crux of the issue.
But I wouldn't consider a pregnancy to be the sort of high stakes situation confronting a burglar to be, although I understand it could be for some women in some circumstances, and in those circumstances I would definitely support them acting in a mode of "self defense".
The law and reality of "self defense" are also extremely emotive, misconstrued and misinterpreted.
BobsPigeon said:
Abortion does indeed cause terminal harm to the potential of a human life, that's without question. Where or when you consider the starting of human life to be is sort of the crux of the issue.
So does contraception.If you are being absolute about this (as you definitely are), so does abstaining from having sex when fertile.
Why are you drawing a distinction between an early abortion (which is quite likely to be of an unviable fetus) and contraception?
In terms of the language that you used above they are equivalent.
Maybe the “potential of” a human life isn’t actually the key thing here, and you just used it without thinking, but if it is, where is your personal line there?
Should we be encouraging all healthy girls from puberty to be trying to conceive, or is the potential of a human life actually a terrible defining line for the law to mandate actions over?
BobsPigeon said:
AJL308 said:
BobsPigeon said:
Hyperbolic nonsense, this thread was started in good faith to discuss the legality of abortion.
In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
That's just rubbish from the outset. You can lawfully kill someone in legitimate defence of your own body, for starters. That's most certainly to the detriment of the dead person.In law nobody has the "right" to control there own body to the detriment of others or wider society, this was pretty much concluded by Hobbes and Locke 300+ years ago and no one's been able to really undermine or argue social contract theory since so I doubt your bleating is going to add anything.
Your analogy doesn't apply here though as what "others" does abortion cause a detriment to? The only detriment is that some people who don't agree with it might be a bit offended and there is no right not to be offended.
We submit ourselves to the rule of law and as subjects of the state and forgo certain liberties and give up a certain amount of agency over our own bodies in exchange for the benefits that enlightenment civilised societies affords us.
Abortion does indeed cause terminal harm to the potential of a human life, that's without question. Where or when you consider the starting of human life to be is sort of the crux of the issue.
But I wouldn't consider a pregnancy to be the sort of high stakes situation confronting a burglar to be, although I understand it could be for some women in some circumstances, and in those circumstances I would definitely support them acting in a mode of "self defense".
The law and reality of "self defense" are also extremely emotive, misconstrued and misinterpreted.
You say that abortion causes harm to the potential of a human life yet you mentioned "others" in your original statement. A "potential" person is not an "other" to which harm can be caused. If you are applying your analogy rationally then you must also be dead set against any form of contraception or to any sex unless it's specifially intended purpose is to create a child.
Northernboy said:
BobsPigeon said:
Abortion does indeed cause terminal harm to the potential of a human life, that's without question. Where or when you consider the starting of human life to be is sort of the crux of the issue.
So does contraception.If you are being absolute about this (as you definitely are), so does abstaining from having sex when fertile.
Why are you drawing a distinction between an early abortion (which is quite likely to be of an unviable fetus) and contraception?
In terms of the language that you used above they are equivalent.
Maybe the “potential of” a human life isn’t actually the key thing here, and you just used it without thinking, but if it is, where is your personal line there?
Should we be encouraging all healthy girls from puberty to be trying to conceive, or is the potential of a human life actually a terrible defining line for the law to mandate actions over?
I have said above and I believe quite strongly that there is, or should be, a clear distinction between abortions and birth control, that's one of the failings of the current law which I don't think was ever passed by parliament with that express idea in mind.
Potential is a poor term... You could argue that I've got two legs and can run and as such I have the potential to win an Olympic gold medal as Usain Bolt, that might be true in once sense but it's also clearly absurd... There's around 100million sperm in every ml of spunk... The chain of causality towards an egg being fertilised is an absolute minefield - the potential outcome of 99.999999999999 (and more)% of sperms is to die somewhere in transit (or on a Kleenex). Likewise a women's eggs to a lesser degree.
Potential human life of any given single gamete or even army of gametes Vs potential human life of a single given zygote is orders of magnitude difference. Attempting to conflate the two is a poor argument in my opinion.
BobsPigeon said:
Potential human life of any given single gamete or even army of gametes Vs potential human life of a single given zygote is orders of magnitude difference. Attempting to conflate the two is a poor argument in my opinion.
But it was you who based your argument on the “potential of life.”If you now accept that that makes no sense then what is your objection to early-term abortion?
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