There is no right to have an abortion

Well I guess it ended up costing one of them their lives, huh?

 

That is an interesting point. It depends on how YOU view the intrusion. If you invite a visitor into your home and says he needs to stay in your home for 9 months or he will die, you should be able to decide what to do about that. If he is your cool Uncle Bob who has been traveling the world for a few years you might welcome his visit. If he is somebody you do not know or trust, or his presence means you will not be able to afford to pay your bills (maybe Bad Bob runs up your phone bill calling 1-900 numbers) don't you agree that you have the right to evict him?

If a woman is looking forward to a new child, she will not see the fetus as an intruder.

 

You seem to elevate the life of the fetus above the life of the woman carrying it. Otherwise you would understand that the one who has already been "quickened" would have priority. That's an easy judgement to make when it does not cost you anything.

Suppose a fetus in a nearby hospital is diagnosed with a severe problem and will not survive without a liver transplant. Let's assume you have a five-year-old daughter who is the ONLY tissue match in the database and they only need one lobe from her liver to save this fetus. Do you think the government should have the right to take your daughter to the hospital and take a lobe from her liver to rescue this fetus without your consent?

 

so you are basically making things up that I have never said, I never said the biological father "is not needed" so please stick to what is said not what you want to think is being said.

 

Anything that cause a change in the normal function of your body is an injury, the difference is that some injuries are consented to ie an operation while some are not consented to.

I'd suggest educating yourself on what injuries occur to the female during pregnancy before attempting, and failing, to be sarcastic as all it shows is your lack of knowledge on the subject.

 

Blame the pro-lifers for attempting to declare a fetus as a person, if that is what pro-lifers want then they are going to have to take ALL the restrictions that apply to that status as well as the protections.

 

Well, your list accomplished my education. However our view of the subject is different. You appear to see pregnancy as a vehicle to inflict injury and I see pregnancy as a natural function of the female body, and you were generous enough to list the risks. The fact that we are still walking around on this planet tells me it appears to be working just fine in most cases. Thank you so much.

 

Fact: Pregnancy does inflict injury.

Fact: Pregnancy is a natural function of the female body.

You: """"The fact that we are still walking around on this planet tells me it appears to be working just fine in most cases""

No one said it didn't.

But it doesn't always work just fine, women die and may have lifelong complications including infertility......just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.


It is a testament to women's strength and courage that despite the effects, they CONSENT anyway.

 

You see pregnancy as a natural function, hmm you do know that a natural function cannot be ascribed rights don't you?

A woman's right to consent to the physical intrusion by a fertilized ovum is based on the pro-lifer ideology of the personhood attributes of the fetus. If the fertilized ovum were merely a physiological 'mass of cells', like a force of nature, the legal meaning of consent, defined as a concurrence of wills, would become an unnecessary, and a meaningless concept. IF it is viewed as a natural force, natural forces cannot break laws. The law is only relevant only to people, the state, or juridical entities such as corporations, and only when entities such as these become involved in the damage ot injuries caused by natural forces as laws applicable - as Mary Anne Case notes, "Law is precisely that which fights nature, If something were all that natural, a law would not be needed to bring it about," - Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy : Page 375.
As a pro-life bumper sticker proclaims "The Natural choice is life", by which they mean that pregnancy is not only a normal but also a natural process, yet the word natural refers to processes that occur without human intervention, like hurricanes, earthquakes and death. If a person becomes involved in these processes they are no longer legally considered natural but are caused, at least in part, by human agency. It is ironic therefore that the pro-life forces and others that say the fetus must be considered to be a person that contradicts any depiction of pregnancy as natural. To the extent that pregnancy is initiated and maintained by an entity that is a person, it is a product of human agency, not the product of a force of nature.

Because a fetus cannot be a person and a force of nature at the same time, to the extent that when a fetus attains human status it loses its status as a natural force. When it causes pregnancy it acts more like a mentally incompetent person than like a natural force - Tristram Engelhardt notes that modern technology transforms what we might think of as the "blind forces of nature" into processes under the human control of the medical field -Source : Engelhardt, "Concluding Remarks" in Abortion and the Status of the Fetus : Page 335
From the standpoint of law, therefore, pregnancy is not a natural process precisely because it is initiated and maintained by an entity, the fetus, that is protected by the state as human life, regardless of whether that human life has attained the status of a person. A woman's right to consent to what a fetus does to her when it makes her pregnant, therefore, derives directly from the state's designation of the fetus as protected human life, and while it makes no sense to say that you consent to a natural force, such as fire, to burn your house, it does make sense to talk about whether you consent to let a person, or some other juridical agent, burn your house. Equally important should you not consent, it is appropriate to call not only the fire department to put out the fire but also the police department to stop the person from breaking the law.
If the state were to categorize the fetus as a mass of living cells void of human identity, of course, the issue of consent disappears, but so, too, would the state's removal of abortion funding from health policies as a means to protect the fetus as human life disappears. Once the state declares the fetus to be under its protection as a form of human life, however, the issue no longer is merely the woman's right to chose what to do with her own body, but rather the woman's right to consent to what the fetus as a form of state protected human life does to her body.

 

Who is to decide what level of risk is "acceptable" for a woman?

 

Who is to decide the level of worth that the fetus's life has? The woman? Sounds like a conflict of interest.

 

Nope, no more conflict of interest than there is when someone decides to defend themselves against non-consented injuries.

 

This is what you said: "I actually don't think the biological father should be forced to pay maintenance if he is prepared to give up all rights to that child .. however I doubt any Republicans would support such a thing as it would mean they would have to reach a little deeper into their pockets."

So saying that the father is not forced to pay maintenance if he gives up all rights = fathers not necessary. However Republicans wouldn't support it because they have to reach deeper into their pockets = higher taxes to support another welfare family. Tell me what part did I misunderstand or make up about what you wrote. Please explain or get a little better at clarifying what you are writing before you put it down.

 

Does he ever?

 

Fathers giving up rights does not mean not needed, you assume that the mother and child do not need the father when in reality it is the father saying he doesn't need the mother and child.

higher taxes to support the approx. 10.1% of children going into the care system each year.

In the USA there are on average 400,000 children in care at anytime.
There is a distinct lack of people wishing to adopt and/or foster children, with only approx. 50% of children being adopted and/or fostered.

so lets take some more figures.

There are around 4.1 million births in the US each year, of which 26,000 (0.63%) are still births and 120,000 (2.9%) are born with 'defects'.
The Number of children in care equates to 10.1% of 'normal' births or if you prefer 400,000 children in care. (normal as in not stillborn of born with defects)

The number of abortions in the US in 2011 was 1.2 Million .. using the same percentages as above;

There would be approx 7,560 Still births
There would be approx 34,800 born with defects
That leaves 1.15 million new children, of which (again using the figures above) 116,921 would be transferred into care - though I suspect given that the woman wanted to abort that figure would be much higher.

Children in care - https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/fa...age=3&view=Fit
foster carer decline - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...are23_ST_N.htm
USA births - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html
Stillbirths - http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stillbirth
Birth Defects - http://www.marchofdimes.com/baby/birthdefects.html
Abortions = http://www.abort73.com/abortion_fact...on_statistics/

and as far as welfare is concerned, what are you going to do with the children whose parent(s) cannot afford to feed them . .let them starve?

 

Good question - are you going to be the one telling a woman she must continue a pregnancy when she has already developed HELLP syndrome? Are you the one to tell her that the anencephalic foetus she is carrying. the one that will never live past a couple of days - is worth risking heart failure? Are you the one who will make those decisions?

 

The woman whose womb is being used is exactly the right person to decide if she is physically, emotionally, and financially able to support the development of that fetus for the next few months. Nobody has the right to dictate terms to her, but if pro-life activists really cared about every life they could setup a volunteer network offering her help to deal with the effects of pregnancy, and help her find a family to adopt the newborn when it arrives. That would be more productive and much less arrogant than the legislative approach.

 

How be you answer Bowerbird's question before posing one of your own?

 

Actually this is precisely what happens.

 

The woman the fetus resides within would be the ONLY person to make decisions for it, as it cannot do so and the only other individual directly involved would be her. It cannot be a conflict of interest if only because there is only one person involved.

 

That is good to hear. I am only familiar (many years ago) with Operation Rescue in upstate NY and I found them to be more interested in using their resources to interfere with women getting to clinics than in supporting those who did decide to continue the pregnancy.

 

That would be the woman.

 

...when she makes her contraceptive choice.

 

What? To rely on a man to put a condom on the right way up? No wonder she will fall pregnant

 

Or not...................