/townhall/ - Townhall

No.

Absolutely not

>>9752
Texas's new abortion law is stupid. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1433288552498929670
Also it's clearly unconstitutional (as applied to pre-viability pregnancies) under existing Supreme Court precedent and won't be enforced by the courts.  (Some people are getting confused by the recent Supreme Court ruling on the procedural question of pre-enforcement challenges.)

>>9752
Well, 20% plus or minus, see a massacre of children.  They probably won't see it otherwise, and few issues are going to be more important, economics, foreign policy, environment -- they don't matter beside the abortion issue.

It's just a thought, but if abortions could be made unnecessary, or so rare to be a non-issue, it would free 20% politically.  A sudden ban is probably not the road, and human sex and reproduction are not my areas of expertise, but I sometimes wonder if it will be possible to move forward in a generally acceptable way.

I think abortion is a very complicated issue, so to directly answer the question of whether it should be banned regardless of context, I would say no.  And in fact, in the case of what Texas is doing, I would say this is a misstep and far from ideal.

Having said that, are abortions are good thing?  Also no.  Like I think most people would agree, if you have to get an abortion something has gone wrong.  Abortions are not fun, easy, or comfortable, and may carry long lasting stress with them.  We do, as a society, need to avoid abortions, and rather than condeming those who seek abortions, we need to do more to support those who choose to go through with a pregnancy.

>>9757
Makes sense.  To mirror the percent that see abortions as massacre, some proportion see banning them as an attack on women.

I was taught that people should be able to control their sexual behavior so to only get pregnant on purpose.  It is vitally important people control their sexual behavior in other ways.  Abortion covers some other cases, true.

I agree that although many fight for the option, few are trying to increase abortions otherwise.

My personal opinion is that human life ought to be broadly thought of beginning the same way that it's considered ending, i.e. through substantial brain activity. If we consider a permanent end to whole brain function as what separates an adult person from a corpse, similarly the line between a mere bunch of cells and an actual person yet born is a permanent beginning of whole brain function. At least, I tend to think this way. It's a messy topic. In general, though, I'd say that 'people' come into being as a result of the pregnancy process and not before pregnancy (as anti-abortion activists claim).

Thus, to me, cases of first and second trimester abortions involve just a pregnant individual taking care of their own bodies as they see fit.

In the third trimester case, I suppose, I'd say that there are two lives in the balance. I'd err, though, on the side of safety and security of the pregnant person in terms of setting up privacy law. I'd see abortion as being necessarily done in many cases but it would be a frustrating thing that ought to be rare.

>>9762
I agree with this sentiment on when things begin, but I also think that I'm not going to be able to convince anyone who believes human life begins at conception on this point. In the case of this law, the line was drawn at something I consider arbitrary, heartbeats. I do not consider a heart to be part of an essential essence of a person. It is what fulfills a biological function that helps sustain a person normally, but replacing the heart with a pump also works and does not make someone not human, therefore the heartbeat of a fetus is arbitrary in my opinion.

Substantial brain activity is where I begin to draw lines. I would prefer women who get abortions to do so as early in pregnancy as possible to avoid approaching that line. Exceptions can of course be made for certain cases.

>>9772
Given that an adult person can receive a transplanted heart without in any way, shape, or form be considered to have 'died' or 'come back to life' or have their fundamental nature as a person changed, then I absolutely agree that using the heart as a metric for who or what counts as a 'person' is absurd.

>>9762 >>9772 >>9777
Perhaps people who think that the heartbeat is morally significant are emotionally driven and using sloppy System-1 thinking rather than engaging in rational System-2 thinking.

>>9782
It's perhaps inevitable given that "hearts" and "heartbeats" have such strong cultural association in people's minds with a bunch of things from the media.

Agreed.

Case in point, this kickass 80s synth tune: