A secular debate about abortion

[Seth]

And as for LP's worries about a woman using that sperm against a man's wishes, well, there are many, many good reasons for sexually active men to wear condoms-- pregnancy prevention being one of the lesser of them. And if a man is concerned about the contents of said condom after the act, well, he doesn't have to leave it lying around, does he? He can take it with him, or flush it down the toilet, or...

Fair enough, but not all guys would necessarily be wary enough, and condoms may break or be deliberately sabotaged - by either partner. When men sabotage women's contraception of course it's FUCKING AWFUL that they're doing that to women. Women do it to men and it's the men's fault for not getting a vasectomy, and for ejaculating... 

Let's add another brick to the load: Let's say that a man and a woman have sex, and they agree beforehand to use contraception, and do. The man uses a condom, and it works properly, and he disposes of it in her bathroom wastebasket. Later, after he's left, she recovers the condom, extracts the semen, and injects it into herself, and becomes pregnant.

What rights does the man now have regarding the gestation, abortion or support for the child?

And I wish more pro-choice people would be honest about one thing: the main rationale behind most actual abortions isn't about the use of the mother's body during pregnancy and birth - it's to avoid biological parenthood, and the attendant parental obligations, for whatever reasons - be they incredibly noble or "selfish" in whatever way. This is a responsible decision to make if you don't want to be a parent, all the same, because it nips the life in the bud before it becomes a person. It's not neglect of an actual sentient being. It's stopping something before it escalates. Good on you. I did it myself once. But honestly, I wish people would just say that more often instead of getting into these webs of sophistry about the usage of the women's bodies and all the rest of it. If it was all, or even predominantly, about the usage of women's bodies, then the women in question would be fairly equanamous were their foetus/embryo to be somehow removed from them and brought to viability in a surrogate mother/synthetic womb, and then be approached 9 months down the line for Child Support money. Would they be equanamous? I doubt it! There would go all their arguments about "being responsible", and "thinking about that beforehand", and "should get sterilised or abstain if you don't want kids"...

Well said. That's one of my primary arguments. Abortion is used as a method of avoiding or evading personal responsibility for getting pregnant. I prefer that people take responsibility for their actions. If you have sex, and you get pregnant, both the mother and father should own up to it and do the right thing and raise the child together. I think that sort of personal integrity and honorable behavior makes for a better society.

But nonetheless, it's the womb, and the fact that it's firmly, deeply inside the female's body that is the rub, here. It may not be the actual issue that bears on the woman's mind while she's making a decision about pregnancy and abortion - but it is the medium through which she has practically inexorable unilateral control over the fate of the developing being inside her, while it remains inside her, all the same. If a man also wants to avoid parental obligation, and has fallen at the same hurdle that women seeking abortions have (ie. failed/absent prophylactic contraception), he just can't do the responsible thing and click "undo". All he could ever arguably do is wash his hands clean of parental obligation while the female retains the same option... But given that this is something that might be tantamount to real future "neglect" of a real flesh and blood child - it's just, it's just not responsible, is it? (Well, actually, that's also kinda deflection, because it skirts around the fact that the woman might have been absolutely adamant about bringing the pregnancy to term - paternal input or no.) Should the male be denied a right to wash his hands clean and leave every part of the fate of the pregnancy to the female on that basis? That females would on a number of occasions still take the pregnancies to birth, and it just wouldn't be good for kids, and parental obligation is to some degree semi-permanently sealed by then (allowing for adoption, and kids being taken into care)? Or should he still have some basic right, in principle, to simply reduce himself to the legal equivalent of a donor to a sperm-bank within a certain timeframe?

The latter.

Biology is a bitch.

Isn't it just! All the more reason to tread carefully around her...

This topic is starting to wear me out actually. I'm particularly sick of the ongoing exchange of ideas where women are luring men into their tar-pit egg-venders, and men are pouring semen into women through filter funnels while they sleep. Can we please descend back to the real world sometime soon - where most men and women just want to get along, and most one-night-stands and frivolous sexual liasons and unwanted pregnancies don't result in mad emotional and philosophical disputes about all the inherently unequal biology and gender inequality in principle in society?

The problems are created by the fringe behavior, by those who abuse the system for their own personal ends without giving due consideration to others. That's what I've been saying all along.

[Coito ergo sum]

Question: Seth - why do you fuck up the quotes in all the posts you respond to? I mean - when you hit the quote button to reply it puts the person to whom you are responding's quotes in the format: [quote="coito ergo sum"], but when you respond you change it so that we can't see any longer who you're responding to - you turn it into [quote]. Why? Can't you just leave it so that we know who the quote is by?

[Seth]

Hello, Seth.

You may have missed this, or I might have missed your reply, or you just don't have one. Whatever is the case, I'll just put it to you again.

A zygote that will develop into a human is no more a human than a zygote that will develop into a chicken is a chicken.

Well, if it comes from a human egg and human sperm, it's not a chicken and will never be a chicken. It is human and will continue to be human for its entire life cycle, so your assertion is nonsense. The zygote contains human DNA. It does not contain chicken or rabbit DNA. It will always contain human DNA, and as it develops, under ordinary circumstances, it will become an adult human being. It will never develop to be a chicken, or a turtle. The primary definition for "being" is "the quality or state of having existence." A human zygote has achieved the quality or state of "being," and therefore it is a "human being" through the use of simple logic and a dictionary.

What you're basing your argument on is the notion that to be a "human being" the organism has to somehow be "complete" in order to qualify. A zygote, which is a single cell, in your inferred argument, is not a "human being" because it's single-celled. But you fail to state how many cells are required for the existence of a "human being." Two. Two hundred? Two hundred million?

What's your objective, scientifically robust metric for when a developing fetus becomes a "human being?" Not a "person" in the law, but a "human being."

There is no objective scientifically robust metric for anything involving moral judgments. I have said that before. I have also mentioned earlier, that this applies to your opinions no less so than mine, but you seem to be resolutely intent on ignoring that aspect. The only reason I can think of for your evasion is that you'll have to admit that I am right, and would therefore have to concede something. Going by the posts you have contributed at the RDF, I expect that will never happen. I expect you to simply keep ignoring points for which you cannot see a possible reply which is plausible and refute the assertion that something might be amiss with your stance.

I am, however, the eternal optimist at heart, and ask you for the third time: In light of your repeated (and correct) mention that my opinions lack objective standards, what makes you think that your ideas are based on a better foundation? If your ideas are better for reasons other than objective standards, on the other hand, why do you keep bothering to point out the lack of objective standards?

I'm arguing for objective standards. In sum, science should determine some specific point in gestation where the fetus reaches some particular, identifiable milestone of development, and the law should acknowledge that moment as the time when the fetus becomes a full "person" in the law and is entitled to protection in the womb.

My preference is for that stage of development when the fetus can experience pain. I suggest the metric used by embryologists for ceasing experimentation on embryos, which is the formation of the notochord, which takes place at about the 20th day of development, or that time thereafter that science can demonstrate, perhaps through MRI examinations of fetal response to external stimuli, that the fetus can experience pain. I find this to be a rational and moral point of demarcation for disallowing on-demand abortion.

[Seth]

You may have missed this, or I might have missed your reply, or you just don't have one. Whatever is the case, I'll just put it to you again.

He is probably waiting for you to answer his question about what your definition of "human being" is, since he can't very well compare definitions without knowing what he's comparing against.

For what it's worth, my definition of "human being" is a genetically and phenotypically human animal which can reason about spatial relationships and understand language. Note that, as Seth noted might be possible, this is different from what the definition of a legal person is, or even what it should be.

From the "personhood" perspective, this is very Singer-like in that it would deny human rights to born infants as much as several months old. I cannot agree. But the definition is consistent with secondary and tertiary definitions of "being" in the dictionaries, which allude to a degree of cognitive ability.

[Seth]

No, I'm agreeing with Seth from the other direction. I don't suggest that the man should be granted a say in the woman's decision; I'm saying that his LACK of rights in the situation entail a commensurate lack of responsibility for the outcome. "Her choice (which is absolute) = her consequences."

And, on that issue, your and Seth's analysis forgets one interested party and renders that party, an actual living, breathing human being, irrelevant to the discussion. The child. If that child is born, he has not had any opportunity to waive the 1/2 of the child support that is supposed to come from one or the other of the parents. The child is simply stripped of the right to support from the father because the mother had the last possible chance to prevent the birth.

What child? We're discussing an unwanted pregnancy; no child exists in that situation, only a fetus. And a fetus has neither rights nor standing in the debate.

Once a child is born, then yes, it obviously has rights and deserves support. But an unwanted fetus has no rights and no particular value to look out for.

Er, that's the fallacy of "begging the question," since the purpose of the debate is to discuss when and if a fetus does or should have rights and standing.

[Seth]

And now that I've given everyone more to chew on, I'm taking an interlude for eggs and baccy...

[Coito ergo sum]

And as for LP's worries about a woman using that sperm against a man's wishes, well, there are many, many good reasons for sexually active men to wear condoms-- pregnancy prevention being one of the lesser of them. And if a man is concerned about the contents of said condom after the act, well, he doesn't have to leave it lying around, does he? He can take it with him, or flush it down the toilet, or...

Fair enough, but not all guys would necessarily be wary enough, and condoms may break or be deliberately sabotaged - by either partner. When men sabotage women's contraception of course it's FUCKING AWFUL that they're doing that to women. Women do it to men and it's the men's fault for not getting a vasectomy, and for ejaculating... 

Let's add another brick to the load: Let's say that a man and a woman have sex, and they agree beforehand to use contraception, and do. The man uses a condom, and it works properly, and he disposes of it in her bathroom wastebasket. Later, after he's left, she recovers the condom, extracts the semen, and injects it into herself, and becomes pregnant.

What rights does the man now have regarding the gestation, abortion or support for the child?

I believe in most states he would be liable for child support if the child is born, and he would not have the right to order her to have an abortion. See, for example, State v Frisard, a Louisiana case where a woman impregnated herself with a guy's sperm after blowing him (he ejaculated into a condom, she took the sperm, and injected into her uterus). http://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of- ... 40516.html - basically, the rule in Louisiana is that a man is strictly liable for his semen. So, the best legal advise is to keep control of your condoms post orgasm. Just make sure you flush them or let them cool down without being in the sole possession of anyone else.

The Frisard case has been misinterpreted as being decided based on the the fact that any sexual contact with a woman makes a man responsible for her child. That's not it - the only issue for the court in Frisard was whether paternity was established. That's done based on a preponderance of the evidence and there was a paternity test indicating 99.94% chance of paternity - but, in Louisiana the test alone is insufficient to prove paternity as a matter of law - so, the court looks at all the facts and circumstances - there was the paternity test, a resemblance between the father and child, and testimony that sexual contact was had at the time of conception - so, taken together the facts indicate that he was the father. Once paternity was established, the father is liable for child support. End of story.

[Coito ergo sum]

Another interesting kind of case are ones where twins are born with different fathers. This has happened, and there is case law out there about it. I'd have to look for it, but I remember running across it back in the 1990s. Where a woman had sex with multiple males in the same time frame, and had two eggs in play at the same time, it has been proven to have happened that twins were born with different fathers..... in other words, in the realm of sexuality and personal relations - everything you can imagine has happened at some point!

[Coito ergo sum]

No, I'm agreeing with Seth from the other direction. I don't suggest that the man should be granted a say in the woman's decision; I'm saying that his LACK of rights in the situation entail a commensurate lack of responsibility for the outcome. "Her choice (which is absolute) = her consequences."

And, on that issue, your and Seth's analysis forgets one interested party and renders that party, an actual living, breathing human being, irrelevant to the discussion. The child. If that child is born, he has not had any opportunity to waive the 1/2 of the child support that is supposed to come from one or the other of the parents. The child is simply stripped of the right to support from the father because the mother had the last possible chance to prevent the birth.

What child? We're discussing an unwanted pregnancy; no child exists in that situation, only a fetus. And a fetus has neither rights nor standing in the debate.

Once a child is born, then yes, it obviously has rights and deserves support. But an unwanted fetus has no rights and no particular value to look out for.

Er, that's the fallacy of "begging the question," since the purpose of the debate is to discuss when and if a fetus does or should have rights and standing.

actually it isn't... begging the question is assuming as true the fact which is actually being debated.

And, you added to the question the allegation that the mother should not have the right to demand ANYTHING from the father, INCLUDING CHILD SUPPORT. You can't now state that the debate is not about that. The obligation to pay child support doesn't attach until after the child is born. If it's not something you considered part of the issue, why did you bring it up? Essentially, you seem to want to make it about "saddling the father with unwanted responsibilities" when it suits you, but when it doesn't you now want to make it solely about "when and if a fetus does or should have rights and standing."

[hadespussercats]

My comments about looking into male pregnancy or similar solutions aren't facetious, and again, I've expressed that concern from my early posts in this thread.

In that case, I'd better answer this:

Men can hire an egg donor, use in vitro fertilization, and hire a pregnancy surrogate. In the U.S. the total cost is probably around $30,000-$50,000 at the moment.

Re your last point-- What you say is true, so long as a man can find and/or afford those resources.

It's not difficult to find someone. Gestational surrogacy results in around 2,000 babies per year in the U.S. While surrogate mothers do often have some restrictions on what cases they will handle - you typically negotiate in advance things like whether she would abort in case of Down syndrome, which obviously might be affected by her views on abortion - the market is sufficiently large that it's likely any parent who truly wants a child could find a match.

As for affording the cost, even the high end of $50,000 is a fraction of the total cost of raising a child in the U.S. Anyone who isn't willing to pay that amount, if necessary, to have a child probably isn't really ready for the responsibilities of parenthood yet.

And, of course, male pregnancy, when it first gets developed, is likely to be even more expensive.

In some states, at least, paying someone to be a gestational surrogate is illegal. That leaves the option of going to states where that isn't an issue, but you have to agree it adds yet another layer of complication that can move fatherhood out of reach for those with fewer resources.

I understand your point about financial readiness on the part of fathers-to-be. An important difference,though, between un-medically-assisted and medically-assisted fatherhood, in financial terms, is that in the latter, the father needs to be able to come up with these vast sums up front, instead of paying for the child's support over the course of the offspring's childhood; also, that medically-assisted fathers not only need to be able to produce that money, but also the money required to support and raise the child after it's born.

And yes, any new technologies are likely to be even more expensive.

[hadespussercats]

Sorry hades, I was arguing generally and rhetorically, and not against you in particular!

With respect to bodily autonomy - I don't think that all arguments to that end are sophistry - I just observe, personally, that some people get so caught up in arguing the toss about that particular point, that they don't realise that a) not having your body used as an incubator needn't necessarily amount to rendering the product of pregnancy dead, and b) there are plenty of other perfectly good bases for aborting that would be perfectly valid even if there was never the issue of the use of women's bodies. 

As to why most women seek abortions - well I don't like to be overly presumptuous myself, either - but I think that most of the rationales will boil down at some basic level to preventing unwanted biological parenthood. I would be surprised to find a significant proportion of women citing the immediate physiological burden and risk of gestation as their main reason for electing to terminate. I think there's maybe some suggestion in the name of the organisation you volunteer for? Like I've said, I think unwanted biological parenthood is a perfectly sound reason for terminating a pregnancy (it was my main one, for the record), and a responsible decision to make in the circumstances - I just think it should be addressed explicitly a little more in discussions about abortion - and from the pro-choice perspective.  

As for my parting shot, it was more an attempt to try to be somewhat flippantly light and optimistic, and take a step back from a rather deep, complex, messy, ugly discussion that has engrossed me and strained my mind a little over the past day - on here and on Pharyngula. I wasn't trying to gloss over troubling issues that aren't going away and may be getting worse in some places - but to try to distract myself with some nicer thoughts. I have no idea quite how much more vastly grave and problematic these issues are over in the US, and from where you are in particular. I've already stated that I speak with the privilege of coming from the UK, where I have very good access to contraception and abortion - neither of which I have to pay for. I wasn't trying to belittle any aspects of the issue, just clear the air in my own mind, a little… 

Gotcha.

Certainly, many people have abortions because they simply don't want to be parents, but happened to get pregnant anyway. As for the name "Planned Parenthood"-- it refers to the virtue of people only becoming parents when they're ready to: an idea that encompasses not only abortions, but sexual education and outreach to men and women alike, as well as making available an array of contraceptives, from condoms to birth control pills to morning-after pills, that aim to reduce the incidence of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Not to mention political outreach and support for issues of reproductive freedom, for men and for women.

As for the argument that women should be able to terminate pregnancies simply because they do not want to become parents-- once the issue of bodily autonomy is taken out of the picture, the argument becomes much more difficult to maintain. After all, we've given extensive time towards discussing the issues of men in the same predicament, and we're generally far from endorsing that potential fathers-to-be have the right to force their partners to get an abortion if the women involved do not want to get one. We've also discussed the issue of disowning parental rights and duties from a financial standpoint-- I think there's a good argument to be made for making policy that keeps this a separate issue from that of abortion itself. If a woman who has helped to produce a human fetus doesn't want to maintain it, and if keeping that fetus/baby alive doesn't involve the woman's physical or financial resources, her rights are not being compromised by that fetus/baby's continued existence.

Of course, there are complicated questions that result from the ability of either biological parent being able to write off their obligations to a child they helped produce-- as Coito has eloquently pointed out. Who, then, supports the child? Adoptive or foster parents, perhaps-- as Warren Dew has pointed out, there is a large market of people who want to have a child but can't produce one on their own.

I'm a long way from being able to comfortably assert the one right answer to all these concerns-- perhaps that one right answer doesn't exist. At this moment in history, however, women's bodies are required for babies to be able to gestate, and women's bodies and lives are the ones at risk when the issue of unwanted pregnancy arises. So women rightfully get to decide if they want their bodies used for that purpose, or not.

[Warren Dew]

Good point. Thanks for finally bringing it up. This means that you are correct in saying that a woman cannot be compelled by another to serve a term of involuntary servitude to gestate a child. But if the State simply makes abortion illegal, then there is no "involuntary servitude" because no requirement is being imposed by another, rather conduct by the woman is being prohibited. That much we know is the case in the law as it exists now. The Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade said that at some point, the interests of the State in preserving life come into play, and that therefore the individual States are permitted to regulate or ban abortion after the second trimester. This is not seen as imposing "involuntary servitude."

Also, if we now discard the notion that a woman may be compelled by either the father or the State to gestate the child, but leave in place a right to an abortion, we now come to tort law, where the harm to the interests of the father, and the State, become compensable injuries.

I agree we come to tort and contract law. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think your desired default is the actual default in the U.S. given statutory law about child support.

I do think that if before having sex, the man says, "if you get pregnant, you're going to abort, right?" and the woman agrees, then the man has a case: more specifically, he should have recourse against the woman for any money damages if she gets pregnant and has a child, which in particular means she can't usefully sue him for child support, since he can countersue for the amount as damages. It seems to me this solves the problems many people are mentioning in most cases, without having to change the present defaults.

The exception comes when the woman simply isn't able to support the child and the taxpayer has to step in - assuming that we're not willing just to let the child starve. In this case, I think it's legitimate for the state to recover child support from the father; the father can try to collect from the mother, but if she's bankrupt, he's out of luck. This is basically equivalent to the counterparty risk in a contract: the father's "contract" with the mother says that the she pays his share of support for the child, but if she can't, he's out of luck; when you agree to a contract, you always take some risk that the other person goes bankrupt and can't deliver. I think this is reasonable because while the father bears less responsibility for the child in this case, the taxpayer bears no responsibility at all, and shouldn't be forced to pay if any of the responsible parties - namely the father and mother - have the money.

[hadespussercats]

LP, I never approved of women tricking men into fatherhood. It's a risk associated with heterosexual sex, I suppose. I don't think it's common enough to warrant deep discussion.

I don't know that it warrants deep discussion, but it might be more common than you realize. It happened to my brother. I've seen it advised on fertility boards when women complain about their husbands not making good on statements that they want children "someday". It's usually done by "accidentally" skipping birth control pills; I don't think sabotaging of condoms is at all common - or easy for the woman - so if the man wants to be safe from it, he's well advised to use a form of birth control that he has control over.

Women who would behave that way are either hateful, or deluded, and I pity the men who unwittingly become involved with them. I agree that men who do not want to become fathers should take steps to protect themselves, and it would be great if condoms weren't the only relatively reliable, non-surgical option open to them.

[hadespussercats]

Coito, there are too many contenders for quotes for me to list them all, but I am a big fan of your "unconditional gift of sperm" argument. I almost want to make a sex film, just so I can use the title "A Gift of Sperm."

And as for LP's worries about a woman using that sperm against a man's wishes, well, there are many, many good reasons for sexually active men to wear condoms-- pregnancy prevention being one of the lesser of them. And if a man is concerned about the contents of said condom after the act, well, he doesn't have to leave it lying around, does he? He can take it with him, or flush it down the toilet, or...

Why thank you hadespussercats. Haven't gotten any counter-argument directed at that yet. It seems to have been largely ignored.

It's probably been ignored because it's a good argument, and difficult to counter.

Edited to Add: I see Seth has made an attempt-- I think you still came off on top of that encounter.

[Warren Dew]

in other words, in the realm of sexuality and personal relations - everything you can imagine has happened at some point!

Immaculate conception?

Sorry, couldn't resist.