BBO Discussion Forums: Nobody has commented on the Ohio abortion bill yet? - BBO Discussion Forums

Wow. I was shocked. (1st heartbeat - about 6 weeks = abortion is illegal.)

Kasich should step up to the plate and send this one to the dustbin.

(1) It's unlikely to stand up to SCOTUS
(2) It's a slap in the face of the American people who are slightly more pro-choice
(3) People will just go to other states or use coat-hangers anyway
(4) What the hell? No Rape or Incest clause?
(5) Many women don't know they are pregnant at 6 weeks.

This was Tuesday. I am happy to say that Ohio has sent Kasich a second option with a 20 week limit. This one seems more reasonable as a rape victim can usually make a reasonable decision in 20 weeks, and I suspect Kasich will select the second bill and veto the heartbeat bill. However, it's a bit scary that a heartbeat bill can get as far as it did in a state that isn't deep red.

I am against abortion except some extreme cases such as pregnancy due to rape or health of mother/baby and birth giving risks.
I hate it to be used as birth control method.


Among the list you just posted

#3 does not make sense. Just because neighbor state allows it does not make me convinced. Just like it does not make me convinced that it is OK to have sex with children here just because you can go to a different country and can do it there.
#4 I already agreed
#5 Is not even close to a good excuse. If they do not want a baby, how early or how late they recognize the pregnancy should not be the criteria. They should prevent it before being pregnant. After all, your decisions/actions connected another human's life to your body. It is no longer "just your body" and as long as you were not forced to in your decisions/actions, you should not have the only say about the life of another human being.

 MrAce, on 2016-December-09, 03:14, said:

#3 already happens.

Northern Ireland and the republic have more restrictive abortion laws than the UK. There is a stream of Irish women coming over to the UK for abortions if they have the money to do so, those who don't while they don't resort to coathangers, do use dangerous drugs not licenced for the purpose bought off the internet.

 Cyberyeti, on 2016-December-09, 04:23, said:

We all know it happens.
But my point is, I have no control or jurisdiction on somewhere else. And just because I do not, or just because they can, is not a legit reason for me to accept it where I live. Basically this is not a good argument to convince me that it is OK here (or wherever the debate is being made) too.

I am not a believer of any religion. But to me the rights of these babies is somehow more important to defend than others. For example gays can express themselves and react to something, they can talk, argue or even fight if needed. So do women. So do people of certain race. But these human babies, are like in life support of a female body and waiting to get well in as short as 9 months! They have no guilt or responsibility to the actions that gave them life. The fact is they have a life, despite being unconscious. And what they have is nothing less or more than what we all had at some point. In fact, what they have is nothing less valuable than what we all have right now!

Yet, they are the only ones among others who can not defend, argue, protest or fight for themselves. We vote and decide whether they should be allowed to be killed by their mother or not.

I think that the climate change and racism arguments are ugly enough without throwing abortion into the mix...

FWIW, I don't view the original post as an attempt to kick off a serious discussion.

 MrAce, on 2016-December-09, 03:14, said:

I agree with Mr Ace but I'm unsure how much weight should be given to male opinion. Even if the reluctant mother intends to put her baby up for adoption, she must

• Host her unwanted baby for 9 months,
• Follow a restricted life-style,
• Endure considerable discomfort,
• Interrupt her career,
• Suffer a traumatic, dangerous, and painful birth,
• Experience an emotionally scarring adoption process,
• Handle post-partum problems.
• Live with permanent after-effects.

Hence although the foetus needs some kind of "guardian ad litem", female opinion seems more relevant than male to this debate.

 MrAce, on 2016-December-09, 03:14, said:

Many unwanted pregnancies result from people who have taken reasonable precautions.

I know people who've got pregnant after a vasectomy, and another who used the pill properly AND a condom. It can happen.

My view is that if the baby could live independent of your body, then it's a baby and has rights, until that point it's part of your body. In the UK that is decided to be 24 weeks, I think largely for the practical reason that the main scan is done at 20 weeks and it gives the time to interpret the scan and make a decision if abnormalities are shown, but I know a work colleague who had a 23 week baby which is thriving 2 years on, so possibly that limit should be reduced a little.

 Cyberyeti, on 2016-December-09, 06:25, said:

"Many" and "reasonable precautions" are overbid.

Only 1 % of the people are supposed to be pregnant with the birth control methods. Yet we have 5-8 % of women get pregnant using the effective methods.
Do you know why? It is not because the methods fail them. It is because they fail the methods. When they do that I do not see it as "reasonable" precautions. The reasons of failure are

• Not taking the medication at certain times
• Alcohol
• Missing dose
• Not reading the medication carefully and not knowing which other medications reduce the effectiveness of the birth control method.
• Using the generic form of the medications
• Narcotic Drugs
• Pretending abstinence due to social or traditional pressures
• Not following the "ring" use procedures correctly

You may argue, and rightly so, "how shall we know whether one took the reasonable precautions but still got pregnant or was she just ignorant and irresponsible or careless and using abortion as a birth control?"
I do not have a smart answer to this.
But to me, when the heart beat starts, the life starts. Whatever it was that caused a human heart beating, whether it was 1 % failure rate of the method that caught you, or whether it was negligence, 9 months of an adult life should not override a beating heart. You can always give it to someone who can raise the kid if you have no intention to raise a kid. As I said earlier and will repeat again, unless there are extreme cases where the female was forced to do something she did not intended to or if the pregnancy or birth giving has serious risks for her life, then I use my vote on her life rather than the baby's.

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-09, 00:40, said:

Some responses above. Kasich strikes me as a more reasonable type of R though, one I could have voted for. So there is some hope that you are right.

 MrAce, on 2016-December-09, 07:33, said:

It's easier now than it used to be to avoid some of the unwanted pregnancies due to being able to take the morning after pill if say a condom splits or you got drunk.

I simply disagree on when I consider life starts.

Childbirth is still a dangerous process, nothing like as dangerous as it used to be, but stressful and dangerous nonetheless. Giving away a child or having an abortion can both have lifelong psychological effects. I think a woman with the help of any advisors she chooses should be able to decide which course she wishes to take.

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-09, 00:40, said:

Did you happen to read the reason given for passing this bill? Because Trump had been elected. Just the first of many horrible things that are bound to occur over the next 4 years.

 Cyberyeti, on 2016-December-09, 08:45, said:

Yea, we will have to agree to disagree on this.

Unfortunately there is no agreement in medicine, philosophy or theology as to what stage of the existence should be associated to life. Every definition, including mine (heart beat) or yours (live independently from the body of carrier) has its own flaws.

 Cyberyeti, on 2016-December-09, 08:45, said:

Oh come on. You keep overbidding. It is nowhere as dangerous as stepping out of your house everyday.

 MrAce, on 2016-December-09, 07:33, said:

But the new bills don't have exceptions for rape and incest. An attempt to amend them to add this failed. I think the only exception they make is when the mother's life is at risk.

What I find really frustrating is that people spend large sums of money and considerable resources being anti-choice, while instead they could be "pro" something -- cheap, safe, effective contraception being widely available.

The fact that this seems never to be part of the discussion is ample proof that the anti-choice position has nothing to do with foetuses; it is about denying women control over their bodies, their sexuality and their lives.

The question of when life begins depends on one's definition of life. I think the usually unspoken assumption is that we mean 'human' life, but even that begs the question of what that means. The answer one gives to that definition pretty much dictates one's position on abortion.

At its most basic, both the egg and the sperm are alive. Many thousands of eggs die without getting fertilized. Are they any the less 'alive' before they die?

Millions of sperm die without ever joining with an egg. Are that any the less 'alive' before they die? They can be seen, under a microscope, swimming away.

A sperm or an egg have precisely as much neurological tissue as does the zygote they form when they combine, and indeed neurological tissues don't begin to differentiate until after many cell divisions. Same, obviously, with the heart, and the brain, and the lungs, etc.

There is no 'wonder' moment when it is evident to any observer that something quantitatively different has developed....it is a slow process. Even the notion that the heartbeat is detected doesn't reflect a sudden elevation in kind of the embryo. Was that embryo 'not life' one half second before the first twitching of the heart muscle? If not, why not?

The problem, as I see it, is that we fail to recognize the limits and utility of morality.

The universe, including biological reality, is amoral. Not immoral nor moral....amoral.

We, as humans, are, for the most part, possessed of a moral sense. Research suggests that some of our basic moral code is near-universal, across ethnicities, cultures and religion but, as the WC itself reveals, there is much interpersonal variation.

Morality can and should guide us in how we deal with reality, but morality is useless as a means of assessing what that reality is. Reality is what it is, not what we would like it to be. I am ignoring the profound questions about the nature of reality in light of our extremely limited ability to perceive reality (we can't sense any but a tiny band of radiation, we can't see bacteria let alone viruses, our hearing operates in a narrow band of frequencies and with limited sensitivity, etc).

So we have the sperm fertilizing the egg and forming a zygote. Countless zygotes die without anyone noticing.

The cell divides into 2 then 4 then 8 and so on and eventually cells begin to differentiate....a long, complex process that leads, if all goes well, to the birth of a baby. Countless items of significance take place, usually well but sometimes not. Embryos die on occasion. Fetuses die on occasion.

This is reality. Where we decide that this process has transformed non-life into life is arbitrary.

We know, because this seems to be universal at least in western societies, that a baby is 'alive' when it is born. Some believe that the zygote becomes alive when it is formed by the fusion of egg and sperm. Catholics believe, so their dogma requires, that in some utterly inexplicable manner the zygote is 'ensouled' at that moment. The questions that begs, in terms of where did the souls come from, when did they get created, what they did for the 1st 13.4 billion years since the big bang, and so on, are never acknowledged yet alone answered.

But we don't need to invoke the bizarre notion of a soul (tho the soul is a useful literary device) in order to imbue a developing human with moral significance. What we need to do is to recognize that we are making a morality based, not a reality based, decision.

The fetus/embryo one half second before the frist twitching of the heart is surely as 'alive' in real terms as it is to be that one half second later.

Here is a thought experiment. You are on a jury, dealing with a case in which someone put an end to the life of a fetus. You have to decide the moral, not the legal, culpability of the killer.

You are told that had the embryo lived one more second, its heart would have begun to beat.

Do you feel that the killer is less blameworthy than had he waited one more second and killed something with a beating heart?

I don't think so.

Now, I know that there are a host of factors at play in the above scenario, and that the example is imperfect. However, my point is that any arbitrary definition of when that fetus became 'human' is always going to be subjective.

Heck, there is a reason why in previous periods of human history babies were not given names for some time after birth. A lot of babies were born alive and then died within hours, days or weeks. Naming was significant...a recognition that a human was amongst us. Now, we tend to name children upon birth, because infant mortality is far lower than it used to be. In the old days, was the child fully human before it was named? Before it was christened, in the Xian tradtions?

One problem with all attempts to legislate against abortion is that all such efforts reflect the imposition by legislators of their moral values, usually based on religion, on others, many of whom follow a different religion or none at all. Morality underlies much legislation, of course, and properly so imo.

But abortion is different, because it requires the making of an artificial distinction for which there seems to be more rational reason to choose one spot to draw the line over any other. With one possible exception: if the fetus is sufficiently developed so as to be able to survive outside the mother, it is alive. Of course, with modern technology, this is itself a fuzzy, relativistic line.

At the end of the day, my view is that the state should be extremely cautious about imposing its moral ideas about when life begins and allow a lot of discretion to the mother, ensuring that she gets proper medical advice to assist her in making a decision. The heartbeat or the 20 weeks, etc, don't measure up to me.

 Vampyr, on 2016-December-09, 10:57, said:

I believe it more malicious. It is a position to use the weight of the state to enforce a person's own sense of morality upon everyone else.

How about a plebescite on the question limited to only women?
As for the other half of the population, perhaps obligatory courses in impulse control?

 Winstonm, on 2016-December-09, 14:47, said:

Well, sure. But I'm not sure that is more malicious than what Vampyr said.

All these factors and more play in to it. I suspect there is also a helping of the primitive ape instinct to control the sexual behavior of others. And some enforcement of poverty thrown in on top.

 Al_U_Card, on 2016-December-09, 15:05, said:

That would assume women are capable of thought and decision making. Obviously that is not the case. They need someone to tell them what an abortion means and when they can or cannot have one.

 Winstonm, on 2016-December-09, 14:47, said:

Isn't that what many laws do? It's morality that tells us that theft is wrong, and then we use the weight of the state to enforce that morality.

The big difference with abortion is that there's not as much of a concensus over the moral issue. But that doesn't mean that anti-abortion people are malicious. Most of them truly think they're trying to do the right thing, and the people who think abortions are acceptable are totally wrong. Anti-abortionists think that abortion is murder, and people don't have much trouble with other laws against murder.

So where do we draw the line? We can't expect 100% agreement on anything -- burglars obviously don't have the same moral code regarding theft as the rest of us do. And even the majority view is not always right -- the majority of southerners were in favor of slavery and later segregation, but they were wrong and these practices were eventually outlawed. This is why we have a representative democracy rather than open referenda for everything -- the legislators are supposed to be wise people who can figure out what the right thing is for everyone.

But sometimes they get it wrong, because they're only human and they have their own biases.