PaulSacramento wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:39 pmHold on a second here Ed.
If the ONLY person that has a right to decide on the outcome of a pregnancy is the woman, why would the male be responsible ???
That doesn't make any sense, sorry.
If the male has no say on wither she has the baby or not, then why is he responsible ???
I'd be there with you if women were hydras.
A hydra in the process of reproduction
If that were the case then one might reasonably say "If you didn't want offspring then you shouldn't have budded!" And if I were the kind of hydra who felt that I had the right to impose my religious views on other hydras I might add "If you've already started budding then resorption is murder!"
But women aren't hydras and they don't reproduce asexually. They can only get pregnant with the help of a male. Males, or at least those who got evidence based sex education, are aware of that. Those who were raised properly also know that if sex results in pregnancy then the woman will have a decision to make -
because it's her body - and the male will have to abide by it -
because he caused the pregnancy. That's the contract. If you don't like it then keep it in your pants.
I know anything other than an unequivocal "yes" is going to cheese you off, so take a breath.
It depends on how you define "alive." The fetus is directly connected to its mother and if you seperate the two prior to 21 weeks it dies, period. The odds of survival don't hit 50% until 25 weeks of gestation. Prior to viability I think that a fetus is alive in the same sense that a kidney is alive. If you seperate it from the mother's body it dies, and there's literally nothing that anybody can do about that.
As far as when a fetus becomes
a human being, I guess I'd put that at viability as well. That's difficult because viability is a moving target - in 1973 the Supreme Court put it at 28 weeks, but today there's a slim chance of survival at 23 weeks (given immediate, extreme, and ongoing medical intervention, and bearing in mind that long term health problems are very likely).
I can deal with preventing abortion after viability, although my opinion is that it's an issue that should be between a woman and her doctor and no stranger or elected official should get a vote. Abortions prior to 22 weeks are already very rare, and of those that do occur almost all of them are medically necessary to protect the mother, so it's a much smaller issue than politicians and activists make it out to be. The vast majority of abortions in the US - over 90% - occur at about 13 weeks.
And I still insist that anyone who sincerely cares about life would pair their anti abortion efforts with pro women and children programs to decrease unwanted pregnancies (mandatory, fact based sex ed, easy access to contraception) and protect women and children (safe, affordable childcare, universal healthcare, job training, universal preschool, etc). If you butt into a stranger's life and demand that they live according to your beliefs then you have a responsibility to help them deal with the consequences of your meddling.
