Explain why you can't smother your 1 and 2 year old

[Anonymous]

Clearly whether you believe in abortion or not, you an understand that one might argue that there are differences in the personhood along the path of fetal development. And you can understand the dependence between a mother and a fetus that are distinct from that of a mother and a live child. Lastly, I am sure that you can see there are many such distinctions that we make in a law. For example, we have chosen to define some people as adults, and some as minors, with distinct rights and responsibilities. You can make a distinction between the rights of animals and people, even though life is a continuum, and the more we learn about animals the more similar we appear to be. In fact the only distinction we appear to have, from a scientific basis, is our dominance through better, but not unique, tool use. Yet killing of one species is murder, another is cruelty to animals, and another is making food.

So if you want to discuss whether a fetus and a toddler are entitled to the same rights, that's fine. But I think it is disingenuous of you to play naive and pretend that no hypotheses even come to mind.

[Anonymous]

No difference. Both disgusting.

[Anonymous]

The fetus, at least until viability, is part of the mother's body. So it is a matter of competing rights, and although one may believe that the fetus's right to life trumps the mother's right to control her body or vice versa, I don't see how you can deny the existence of the mother's competing right.

With a baby (and perhaps a viable fetus), adoption provides a way that both of these rights can be satisfied, so the tension between these competing rights is no longer present. That, to me, is the salient difference, both legally and morally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:a fetus is a potential person.

Then you should be arrested for murdering a potential person with each of your monthly cycles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Right, and I'm the potential president, but they still won't let me in the White House.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This is silly. In the natural course of things, the fetus will become what you call a person, at some point. It won't become anything else -- not a bus, not a bird, not a dog. There is NO chance it will become anything else, and there is a very good chance that it will be born alive, even if the mother doesn't take any special precautions. On the other hand, there is only an infinitesimal chance that you will become President. So cute and glib response, but illogical and hardly qualifiying as a moral explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a useless debate -- really. People on opposite sides of the issue fundamentally view the morals differently. It's not worth the fight. Nobody's going to change the other's mind.

PP is absolutely 100% correct. I believe it is a woman's right to choose. Pro-lifers will never change my mind. I also believe this is a privacy issue and is no one's business except the woman who is going to carry child, deliver, nurture and bear responsibility for a long time.

[Anonymous]

OP -- the difference is clear to me -- that a woman who doesn't want a baby, toddler or whatever age human being has the option of relinquishing rights to the child, and that child can be cared for by others.

A woman who doesn't want an embryo or fetus in her body doesn't have any way to turn the gestation of that embryo or fetus over to another person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Right, and I'm the potential president, but they still won't let me in the White House.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This is silly. In the natural course of things, the fetus will become what you call a person, at some point. It won't become anything else -- not a bus, not a bird, not a dog. There is NO chance it will become anything else, and there is a very good chance that it will be born alive, even if the mother doesn't take any special precautions. On the other hand, there is only an infinitesimal chance that you will become President. So cute and glib response, but illogical and hardly qualifiying as a moral explanation.

What makes a dog less worthy of life, aside from what a particular religion says?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a fetus is a potential person.

Then you should be arrested for murdering a potential person with each of your monthly cycles.

This is beyond silly; it is asnine. Note, however, there are some religious fanatics who believe all kinds of birth control should be illegal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:when you could have aborted them. The mother's reason was apparently the same reason why many people have abortions: she just didn't want the responsibility. Logically, what's the difference? This is an honest question. Why as a society are we horrified by the one act but have enshrined the other in our Constitution? I would really like to hear the best rational answer from the pro-choice folks.

If this is a serious question then you need immediate mental health counselling. You can't smother your children for the same damn reason that you can't murder someone else. Comparing what this woman did to abortion is beyond absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:when you could have aborted them. The mother's reason was apparently the same reason why many people have abortions: she just didn't want the responsibility. Logically, what's the difference? This is an honest question. Why as a society are we horrified by the one act but have enshrined the other in our Constitution? I would really like to hear the best rational answer from the pro-choice folks.

As a lawyer you know that the motive does not define the crime. The issue is the extent to which the fetus and a one year old are the same.

[Anonymous]

OP again. Thanks to those who gave thoughtful responses. As a young woman, I always considered myself pro-choice, I suppose because I wanted to be able to have sex without having to risk a change in my lifestyle. Now that I am older and have been thinking about it, I have a hard time morally and logically drawing the line that others are comfortable drawing. That's why the recent mother/child killings prompted my email. It's also why I think truly open minded people can change their minds one way or the other, and should remain open to doing so. Anyone who wants to "close the debate" in my opinion consciously or unconsciously knows she doesn't have a strong moral or rational position, so doesn't want to talk about it. Unfortunatley in my experience that's usually the po-choice crowd, which has made me come to suspect the credibility of that position.

Of all the answers offered here, I think the one I find most persusive is the "competing interests" argument that arises from the fact that the fetus/baby is still in the mother's body. But I'm still not sure that this is compelling in the ordinary case, since the fetus is only there because of a voluntary act by the mother (excluding rape, of course). And it seems to me that if you voluntarily bring a human life, or potential human life, into the world. and you are solely capable of caring for it, then that gives you a greater, not lesser, moral responsibility to do so.

The argument that people should be able to draw lines for themselves is not very convincing to me, because why couldn't someone draw the line at 1 or 2 years?

Finally, the fact that a close relative was recently diagnosed with Alzheimers has gotten me thinking about the parallels at the other end of life. This relative, if she lives, will eventually not be able to speak or care for herself in even the most basic ways. Caring for her, whether financially or physically, is a huge responsibility I don't want. But I know that I can't kill her, even though there is no chance she is ever going to become an independent person again, unlike a fetus.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I think abortion is wrong in most circumstances (I appreciate the risk to your own life exception someone pointed out), but I'm not sure it should be legally prohibited. I hope the conversation will continue so that more people come to see that it is not really all that different from killing your 1 or 2 year old, or your elderly infirm relatives, I really can't understand why people say it's "so obvious" that a fetus is meaningfully different from a 1 year old, since, as someone said, life is a continuum. If it's life, it's life, We give different categories of human life different legal rights and responsibilities, as someone said, but there is only only category that we say has no rights whatever due to no act of its own.

Thanks again for sharing your views.

[Anonymous]

OP, while I can't address your original comparison because of it's absurdity, you are certainly welcome to your opinion. What you are not welcome to do is impose your beliefs on others. If you think abortion is wrong, don't have one. If you think gay marriage is wrong, don't marry a gay person. If you think certain books are blasphemous, don't read them. And keep in mind, it's pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I think that is the big distinction you might be missing in this debate.

[Anonymous]

Here's the big difference. A fetus resides within another person's body. Your relative with Alzheimers does not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a young woman, I always considered myself pro-choice, I suppose because I wanted to be able to have sex without having to risk a change in my lifestyle.

You weren't pro-choice, you just didn't want responsibility. Very big difference.