How come people who are against abortion are in favor of the death penalty? Kind of seems like a contradicition/
How come people who are against abortion are in favor of the death penalty? Kind of seems like a contradicition/
159 comments
-
Just guessing here, but I’d assume it’s because the unborn have potential and the bad guys had their chance. I don’t agree, but that’s what I assume being around some people like that…
-
As someone recently told me, they don’t worry about saving lives, they worry about saving souls.
You need to abide by the quaint rules of the magical sky daddy for that, even if they don’t make sense.
-
Except clearly any aborted fetus would immediately go to heaven based on what's written in the bible. In fact, heaven should be absolutely completely full of dead babies based on miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. if you believe that they get a soul at the moment of conception.
So that logic doesn't really make sense either. Which is par for the course.
-
Actually, nobody goes to heaven when they die (according to the bible). Everyone must wait until judgement day when all the graves, etc, open and we all face judgement at that point. This surprised me when I first learned it because it goes against all the Christian culture I've ever been taught and experienced.
So grandma isn't currently in heaven no matter how good she was.
-
I was juuuuuuust about to explain how making sense isn't a requirement to them, until I saw your last sentence. Then I knew you already get it.
-
Uhh no? Non-baptized souls go to limbo according to Christian theology.
-
-
I dont think it really has anything to do with that. A state recently sued due to abortion and teen pregnancy reduction efforts leading to decreased teenage pregnancy rates arguing something along the lines of our populations are going down and it will cost us in population, political representation, and federal resources.
This is about cheap/free labor, disenfranchising women, and maintaining a permanent disabled and poverty-stricken underclasses that keep everyone on up in line with the hierarchy
-
But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
-
-
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
-
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say "take the deal, or the court will fuck you".
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there's no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can't say he didn't do it, and wasn't even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn't in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
-
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I'd favor death but since we don't I can't go that far.
-
-
-
I think they just see it as very simple: killing innocent babies - no, killing evil criminals - yes. It sounds perfectly alright if you don't think about it too much.
-
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
-
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person's right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably not be legal, I'll add that it's not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn't start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
I say "probably" because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don't believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
-
But should we even punish?
I don't mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it's two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn't deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don't think so.
I'm not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I'm just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I'm not trying to excuse criminals, I'm just saying that punishment doesn't work.
-
It doesn't work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
-
-
-
It only sounds like a contradiction if you take "pro-life" literally. In fact, I find this hard to understand at all if you simply just listen to pro-lifers.
Let me be clear, I'm about as firm a supporter of a woman's right to choose as they come. I'm also adamantly against the death penalty. Do you find this position to be contradictory?
However, the general position of "pro lifers" does not contradict this at all, pretty obviously. They think that a fetus is a child that hasn't been born yet, and because it hasn't been born, it's completely innocent. So you have no right to take it's life. However, if some person in life has done something in life that removes that innocence, they believe sometimes that rises to such a heinous level that they must be permanently and irrevocably removed from society.
There are other glaring contradictions in their position, like not wanting to provide support to that innocent baby once it has come into the world, but this is clearly not one of them.
-
I'm pro choice but also anti-death penalty, but only because if someone is horrible enough to deserve it then they don't deserve death, because death is the easy way out of suffering. They deserve to live long, miserable lives in a 3-meter cell.
-
-
Because people receiving the death penalty theoretically did something wrong, and fetuses did not. I'm neither against abortion nor pro death penalty, and I don't really see a contradiction there.
-
Former Christian here.
This is it. Criminals have (theoretically) been proven guilty. Some crimes are worthy of death.
A fetus (ahem unborn baby) has cast no sin and does not deserve death.
Christians would also say that they would never get out to death because they would never do anything wrong but when you bring up the fact that Jesus himself said you should be willing to suffer even to the point of suffering on a cross, they start changing the subject.
-
That wasn't so hard, was it? People tripping over themselves to find a gotcha and forgetting to use a little common sense.
-
-
They're obsessed with punishment. A lot of them see unwanted pregnancy as a just punishment for recreational sex.
-
Because they don't care about "life".
They care about punishing people.
-
An unwanted unplanned baby is punishment for having sex outside of marriage.
Death penalty is punishment for being convicted of murder.
It's perfectly consistent when you look at it all about punishment.
The cruelty is indeed the point
-
-
It's not all the same people: Roman Catholics, for example, tend to oppose both.
-
Roman Catholic doctrine opposes both, but the bishops don't go around threatening to withhold religious services for politicians who allow the death penalty like they do with pro-choice politicians....
-
I could have sworn that there was a news story of Peloci being denied the sacrament due to her supporting an abortion bill.
-
-
-
Because it's never been about anything other than control. The right to choose anything is abhorrent to them. The only rights they want you to have are the right to be dictated to and the right to be like them.
-
The death penalty doesn't control women.
-
It's a pastime of liberal pundits to point out that the pro-life governor of some flyover state also supports the death penalty and so on and so forth. We get incredulous and infuriated at their blatant hypocrisy. We call them stupid, which really sets them off [...] They don't think of themselves as self-serving hypocrites or idiots who can't keep their facts straight long enough to form a cogent argument in continuity with the rest of their ideology. We try to describe this as “cognitive dissonance” or other give other armchair diagnosis that doesn't fully capture what's going on. I'd like to give them more credit than that. They clearly believe in something, and in that context their words and actions would make sense, but it's not what they're self-advertising when you ask what they believe in.
From still the best description of american conservative thought I've read: an essay by u/kin7es: https://wiki.dlma.com/belief-system-of-republicans
-
Everyone has a spot on the big food pyramid of the socio-political hierarchy. Good, smart, and hardworking people of merit make their way to the top. Bad, dumb, and lazy people go to the bottom. For convenience sake, this hierarchy is color-coded. In a zero-sum world, everyone who gets to the top has to knock someone down a rung to make room.
I would argue this is how republican voters think. That they’re in the right because they are voting for the right of the individual. But on the other hand I think Republican policy makers give zero shits about a person’s self worth and actualization but rather they know that they need to feed the machine and we need the poor babies born to do so, and on the other hand they can demonstrate some form of moral high ground by deciding life and death.
There’s no death penalty for defrauding elections, molding the healthcare (or really any corporate) system to work for harm and profit, avoiding taxation through infinite shell companies and offshore bank accounts. Those things are celebrated as “beating the system”
Still to this day everyone that claims “Plandemic” is chasing some invisible elite power structure that somehow only includes democrats, without ever getting mad at the corporations that profited immensely off developing covid vaccines and charging market price for them as a portion of the world was dying.
-
-
-
Because it's not about saving lives, it never has been. It's about control.
-
There's no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn't be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies
(I'm not picking a side in the "Are fetuses people?" debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)
-
Kind of seems like a contradiction
They don't care. There's no point in calling conservatives out on hypocrisy. Only a very small number of them will give a shit, and those will be the ones who were already having doubts.
-
Precisely this. From a philosophical-logical POV, it doesn't make sense. From the POV of establishing and maintaining power/ dominance/ oppression/ hegemony, however, it's the only thing that makes sense.
-
-
They would argue that the "baby" is innocent.
-
So was the guy they executed the other day right? So innocence might not be it either
-
-
In the end, it's because they're told that that's the way it is.
Abortion makes a an easy political point. Vote for the children.
Being hard on crime and executing people, That's another easy political point. Vote for the law abiding citizens.
They don't care that those two things are at odds They don't care about life or death. They care about their own exact situation, and don't really give a rat's ass about anyone else. They believe that the team they're backing gives them the best advantage, and that's absolutely all they care about. Beyond that, it's simply consuming and regurgitating the propaganda, self-perpetuating.
-
I'm pro-choice, but mostly anti-death penalty, isn't that a contradiction?
I don't really think so. A person's bodily autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap.
-
I think it's not necessarily a contradiction to hold your pro-choice and anti-death penalty stance, but it's still a contradiction to hold the pro-life and pro-death penalty stance if your reasoning behind the pro-life stance is that all life is sacred.
I agree that a person's body autonomy and the state's power to execute citizens should not overlap, but I still think that giving the "all life is sacred" line to justify pro-life and then being pro-death penalty "because some people deserve to die" amounts to hypocrisy.
-
-
They don't actually care about life, they just don't want women to have control over their bodies.
-
Because with reactionaries, the cruelty is the point.
-
IS it a contradiction? I don't agree with the death penalty or anti-abortion position, but I don't see some essential link between either position. You can hold two different beliefs about two different things is how come.
-
They literally call themselves pro-life and then express support for the death penalty.
-
Sure, but OP didn't ask, 'How can people call themselves pro-life but are be for the death penalty?' I'm not one to hang onto whatever catch phrases or name a movement lands with. Should* I expect the land back movement to, say, lay down on the ground as a for of protest? 'BUT LAND BACK IS IN THE NAAAAAAAME'. Do we think defund the police want there to be nobody to apprehend, say, right-wing terrorists?
Edit; accidentally a word
-
-
-
contradiction
You’ve discovered conservative politics. Party of freedom that wants to restrict women’s access to healthcare, books in schools, reproductive rights, healthcare for children, etc.
-
Ain't Taliban follows the same method of eradicating women empowerment!
-
-
Forced birthers don't actually care about "life". They care about violently controlling anybody who isn't a pale bro.
-
Liberals in favor of reproductive rights also tend to be against the death penalty. Is that a contradiction? Conservatives love twisting this into “they want to kill babies, not criminals.”
Do you think they’re right about that? Or is it more nuanced of an issue? If it’s more nuanced of an issue, then it’s more nuanced in both directions.
Liberals prioritize the woman’s ability to decide what happens with her body. They don’t like abortions, but they think they must be allowed if that’s what the woman chooses. They also recognize that it’s a medical procedure that’s absolutely necessary sometimes and other times might prevent an unwanted child from being born into bad circumstances. Meanwhile, liberals tend to be against the death penalty because our justice system is very flawed and innocent people have been put to death in the past. Perhaps a woman is allowed to decide what happens to a congregation of cells inside her body, but people shouldn’t decide the life or death of other people when imprisonment is always there as an option.
Conservatives think in terms of essentials and things are very black and white. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. They think life comes from god so it’s his affair and not our place to countermand a new life that he’s just brought into being. Meanwhile if a grown person with a mind chooses to commit crimes, that’s on them. God makes some pretty hard judgments in the Bible so they think great we can too and that will make us like god. Conservatives also tend to believe that some people are essentially good, and others are essentially bad. And in that framework, once a person has shown themselves to be a criminal, you know they are bad so what’s the point of letting them live. Meanwhile you have no idea if a fetus in the womb will be good or bad yet.
Please don’t downvote me for understanding both positions :)
-
It's not about ethics, it never was. It's about CONTROL.
-
Most people aren't all that well informed and don't do a lot of crtical thinking about their political positions on things. Many people are only guided by their emotions.
If your Church says that life begins at conception, then abortion is killing babies. So you'd be angry about abortions happening.
If you hear a horrible crime, you're angry about that and might want the person that did that crime to be executed. If you never hear about or think about innocent people being execute, never consider the ethical problems with a government killing people, never consider the costs of it, and all the other arguments against the death penalty, then you can go through life thinking there's no problem with it.
And even if you hear the rational arguments, they get overpowered by emotion the next time someone says "abortion is murder" or you hear about a horrible crime happening that might qualify for the death penalty.
-
This. People are not that complicated
-
-
They’re both cruel to anyone “below” them (this is a simplistic argument.) They’re easy to cry wolf about in order to draw people over to your side, people who vote and act emotionally
-
welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.
-
To be fair to those people (which I'm really not inclined to be), I'm pro-choice but strongly against the death penalty. So I guess it swings both ways.
-
it doesn't swing both ways. They are claiming the position of being "pro life" which is clearly hypocritical. No one on the other side is claiming to be "pro death" or "anti life".
-
That's a good point, actually. I hadn't thought it through enough.
-
-
-
They only care until you’re born, then you can go and die in a ditch somewhere.
-
Even they don't realize that what they spout is just a safe proxy cover for the real issues they are unable to articulate.
-
-
I blame religion.
-
Because they are hypocrites, once that baby leaves the womb they give zero fucks.
Don't get an abortion, also we aren't paying for that kids lunch
-
It is, but they will persist because their motivation has nothing to do with rational thinking.
-
I'm pro abortion and against the death penalty! Someone ask me! I promise I'm not a troll. I am honestly pro abortion not just pro choice.
-
What do you mean by that? You’re an anti-natalist?
-
Nope. I actually think life is sacred. The reason I'm pro-abortion is because I think anything that can be done to further impede children being born when we have hundreds of thousands of children in America alone who are orphans. That is a travesty.
My challenge to anyone who is anti-abortion would be are they adopting? Because their shit position is perpetuating a stream of children being born without someone to care for them either physically or emotionally.
In a perfect world, abortion would not exist outside of medical necessity. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world and as such many women are having children to be born into a cold and loveless world.
It's sad. I could not imagine how cruel someone would have to be to be anti-abortion and yet so willing to effectively let a child's life be aborted once they're born.
-
I think they're pro-edgelord
-
-
-
Punishment. They aren't against abortion, they're pro punishment. They don't think any laws should be about mitigation or helping, only as a means of punishing.
It's in how they talk: "she should have kept her legs closed"; "that's what you get for being a slut"; "if you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex". The pregnancy is a punishment for anyone who wants to have sex, but doesn't want to have children. And jail or death is the punishment for avoiding that previous punishment.
When talking about gun control, too: "why should I - a law abiding citizen - be punished for the actions of a few criminals?"; "ShAlL noT bE INfrInGeD". They don't want laws to do anything but punish. Mitigation? Expansion of freedoms of "them"? No.
Look at voter ID laws: they're restrictive to our freedom, but proposed as punishment for "fraud".
And it often stems from an individualistic and Evangelical ideal. Everyone is "responsible" for their actions. There are no systemic issues in the mind of an evangelical. God is punishing the individual. The laws are punishing the individual. We don't need to change, because we includes I, and I don't need to change, because "I'm a good Christian warrior in the fight against evil".
And evangelicals definitely think there is a spiritual war going on, so punishment of the "wicked" is always an option. Because being wicked is an individual issue.
(Also why they think drug addiction is a moral failing of the individual, not a societal one, and therefore they should be punished).
Right now, evangelicalism and their Christofascist views are moving into political positions of power. They have tons of money coming in, and even if Fuckface 45 (their evangelical God-king warrior) doesn't get into office, they'll still continue to influence policy and grab seats of power.
We need to be aware of them, and stop them at every pass.
-
These same people also solve seem to give af about the suffering of children outside of the border of the country.
I've yet to hear any evangelical cry about dead Palestinian children or the suffering of children on the other side of the American Mexican border.
-
Because it's not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.
It's about curtailing choice.
-
If you smoke weed you're more likely to wear converse. It's aesthetics. When someone says they're anti abortion I usually see it as aesthetics. They want others to see them as being anti abortion. That's what they get out of it.
It isn't a literal belief. Democrats reduce abortions, much better than cons. Being anti abortion should mean voting for Democrats... IF you were still taking things literally. It's not misinformation or lack of education, it's misaligned priorities.
They're just trying to be a tribe and signal allegiance. To have literal beliefs that you live by regardless of "your side" is a completely different game to what they're playing.
-
I think that can be explained, but tell me how someone can be in favor of the death penalty but be against assisted suicide.
-
but be against assisted suicide
No free hand outs! You gotta work for your death!
/s
-
-
I'm trying to be the devil's advocate here: one could say that one is an innocent "life" while the other is not.
-
The common thread is harm and punishment. They wish harm to those they would punish for the transgressions they make up in their heads
-
I obviously don't agree with them, but my assumption is that it has to do with maturity/innocence. An unborn child hasn't done anything wrong. They're full of opportunity and have a whole life ahead of them. A criminal sentenced for death has I some way done something very wrong. They've had their chance and failed.
-
Makes more sense when you realise it isn't about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
-
They want men to choose who lives or dies. They absolutely do not want women to be in charge of anything. That's why no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. A man made a decision, they don't want a woman to have the power to reverse it.
-
Because the inmates deserve it. The babies don’t.
-
It ultimately is religious belief.
Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.
Everything else is just window dressing.
-
Underlying their shallow morals is a undiagnosed mental condition. More often than not from my perspective its usually a cluster B personality disorder. NPD/BPD or one of the others variants. They simply lack the ability to see their hypocrisy. They lack the basic empathy necessary to realize it. Due to this they a mortally afraid of therapy and are not likely to ever get better. What we have to do is improve identifying them and preventing their illness from destroying those around them. Not likely to happen when so many of them are elected to office. If you haven't noticed mental health systems in this country are In a shambles. This is not a accident.
-
Because they’re goddamned thoughtless morons.
-
I have the same question for the opposite as well. Or for being for abortion and also vegan.
-
A (human) mother that carries a growing fetus is a living being. A pig, dog or a cow as well. They feel physically and emotionally and can be hurt.
A fetus is, up to a certain point, just a slab of meat.
As a vegan I don't care about slabs of meat, I care about living beings and I think we shouldn't hurt them.
-
Well, one difference is that the prisoner is not housed inside an unwilling woman's womb. That's not where steaks and pork chops come from either. Hope that helps.
-
-
The suffering is the point. It's got nothing to do with morals or human rights or the death penalty or abortion or "Christian values". It's all about making "those people" suffer.
-
Punishment fetish.
-
Because they're not pro life, they're pro suffering.
And they want to control others (against their will if possible), so ending someone's life and forcing someone to gestate a baby or die in the process fall in exactly the same bag.
-
It's a jeebus said so thing. Babies need to be baptized and sinners need to be sent to hell.
-
How come *some people who are against abortion are *also in favor of the death penalty? (Ftfy) Kind of seems like a contradicition/
What contradiction do you speak of? Save a life, take a life. Seems logical doesn't it?
-
The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where 'pro-choice' people draw the line. The 'pro-life' view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
-
To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
-
Surely you can get rid of that 'parasite' in the first few months instead of waiting for the last minute? I don't see how drawing the line at, say 12 weeks now somehow takes away a person's bodily autonomy.
Speaking of a red herring, a comparison to a forced kidney donation is completely irrelevant here.
-
You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process.
Okay, let's take this reasoning even further then. Why can't this same logic be used to a 3 year old?
-
-
For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don't want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother's death and it's not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it's better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn't have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she's dying.
That said, I don't think there's anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don't want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It's better that it be considered a medical standard.
-
I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What's wrong with this?
-
-
are you a sleeper account? 7mo old acct & in 1h you’ve responded 2x to emotionally charged political topics with sidelining , near-no-commitment comments that take up space & try to dilute the issue
Abortion is a human right. Death penalty is cruel & horrifying.
-
Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn't be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I've noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
-
For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it's less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
-
Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they'd be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
-
-
Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
-
I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is 'pro-life,' I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re 'pro-choice,' I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there's no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the 'truth' is there somewhere in between.
-
-
- Momma’s threat “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it” hits harder.
-
If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn't want an abortion. It's therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.
-
159 comments