I'm outraged because nobody in this thread is as interested in drawing a line somewhere between "postcoital contraception" and "aborting a nearly-viable fetus" as they are in holding the line on either side of "fertilized embryo" and "infant".
I guess I'll add to the chorus of people who "just don't understand the other side" in saying that I don't understand either side. Arguing for fertilized embryo rights makes no sense to me. But arguing in favor of abortion and not even mentioning where the line is drawn makes just as little sense. Oft-repeated phrases like "a fetus isn't a person" sound scary to me. It's casual dismissiveness that falls back on pure terminology, and the thing being dismissed might have a brain comparable to that of an infant. Specificity is extremely important here.
If people are going to act like abortion rights are the most obviously ethical thing in the world, I really wish they'd stop using the word fetus. The obvious, strong argument for abortion only applies to abortions before the fetus is morally person-like. Once a fetus is sufficiently person-like, we must at least admit that the moral calculus is complicated, since at that point there's more than one significant outcome for a feeling, thinking thing.
> But arguing in favor of abortion and not even mentioning where the line is drawn makes just as little sense.
Because it's not really relevant—the laws making it illegal are making it illegal across the board, no matter how early. The only reason for the heartbeat style laws was to make abortions as a whole as difficult as they could be under Roe. But now that's no longer a concern, the bans are across the board.
> The obvious, strong argument for abortion only applies to abortions before the fetus is morally person-like
Late term abortions are rare, and both expensive and unpleasant enough that you don't go through it unless there's a strong medical need.
So it's not discussed much because it's not a big part of what happens.
> Because it's not really relevant—the laws making it illegal are making it illegal across the board, no matter how early.
This doesn't make any sense. Since the recent SCOTUS decision, laws are surely being drafted in many states right now. People may still be discussing, writing, overturning, and re-writing abortion law twenty years from now. Having a coherent moral position on the issue is absolutely relevant.
> But now that's no longer a concern, the bans are across the board.
This is just completely false. There are fifty states, and most of them have now and will continue to have threshold or multi-threshold laws. By my count six states have blanket bans, and the percentage of the population living under those blanket ban laws is extremely small.
And this is exactly what's bugging me. I think there is a vast middle ground of people who believe all these things:
1. Aborting a fetus with a functioning brain is wrong.
2. Forcing women to carry pregnancies to term against their will is wrong.
3. (1) becomes more wrong the further developed the fetus is.
4. (2) becomes more wrong the greater the harm or risk of harm to the mother is.
And these are the people writing most of the laws in most states. They're also the people that drafted the original Roe v. Wade opinion. These people fall on a spectrum between pro-choice and pro-life, because it's a complicated moral question.
> So it's not discussed much because it's not a big part of what happens.
I think these are Internet goggles. I think it's discussed a lot, given how many different laws there are throughout the world and how detailed many of them are in their timelines and conditions. But for some reason on message boards, it's all Christians unsubtly implying that aborting a fertilized embryo is like making somebody who exists not exist anymore, and on the other side people saying "you're so dumb, a fetus isn't a person" as if that completely settles the question. And the same people act like it's equally obvious that's it's a horrific atrocity to kill an infant that only gestated for 24 weeks, just because its using its lungs and its location in space relative to the mother has changed.
Does it make sense if I say that I'm just as appalled by the simplistically-pro-choice disregard for somewhat-cognitively-developed fetuses as I am by the simplistically-pro-life disregard for a mother's burden? Why is it sufficient that late term abortions are just "rare, expensive, and unpleasant"? Aren't they just as wrong as keeping an unwilling mother from aborting a microscopic blastocyst?
I guess I'll add to the chorus of people who "just don't understand the other side" in saying that I don't understand either side. Arguing for fertilized embryo rights makes no sense to me. But arguing in favor of abortion and not even mentioning where the line is drawn makes just as little sense. Oft-repeated phrases like "a fetus isn't a person" sound scary to me. It's casual dismissiveness that falls back on pure terminology, and the thing being dismissed might have a brain comparable to that of an infant. Specificity is extremely important here.
If people are going to act like abortion rights are the most obviously ethical thing in the world, I really wish they'd stop using the word fetus. The obvious, strong argument for abortion only applies to abortions before the fetus is morally person-like. Once a fetus is sufficiently person-like, we must at least admit that the moral calculus is complicated, since at that point there's more than one significant outcome for a feeling, thinking thing.