Oh, Jezebel - warning, abortion-related rant
Good God!
There is an article on Jezebel purporting to debate whether abortions should be legal after fetal viability date (i.e. is it OK to abort where, if there was a birth, the resulting baby would be able to live, either by himself or with help of machines).
WHAT THE HELL?!?!
While I have complicated feelings on abortion, I do believe that some abortions should be legal - if you know the fetus is non-viable, for example, it seems insane to force a woman to go through full gestation and birth only to deliver a corpse or someone who'd survive for 15 minutes outside the womb. I think those should be OK at any time. I think abortions for pregnancies which are result of rape or incest, or pose a severe health risk to the mother, are also OK. And, unlike pro-lifers, I don't happen to believe life begins at conception, so much as I find them personally morally repugnant absent criteria above, I believe first-trimester abortions should be legal across the board.
BUT. You know what all of the above have in common? NONE OF THEM ARE PERFORMED WHEN THE FETUS IS VIABLE OUTSIDE THE WOMB! Either the fetus in question is inviable period (due to severe defects) or they are performed before the fetus is viable.
If you perform an abortion on a viable-outside-the-womb fetus, you know what that is? That's right, murder. Now, sometimes murder is excusable (in the aforementioned 'you can only save the mother or the child, pick' scenario), but that is not what Jezebel is talking about. The article was arguing 'shouldn't women have choice all the way? Shouldn't they have more time to decide? Why do they have to carry it for an additional month when they want it out now etc etc." BARF. When a fetus is independently viable, it's a person and you don't get to kill a person merely because it's convenient. I am a libertarian, I am all for personal freedoms, but only when they don't impinge on freedoms of others, in this case the freaking live infant. Once that fetus becomes a person, it has rights, a right of not being murdered being one of them. I mean, I like to sleep in every morning but that doesn't mean I can go off and strangle my infant because I have to get up at 7am every day due to her and this is inconvenient! I can't throw her under a bus because taking care of a child is stressful and I hate it (for the record, I don't but this is a hypothetical) or it may cost me a career opportunity or lower my standard of living. You can't just get rid of a person to better yourself.
Seriously, Jezebel. WTF.
There is an article on Jezebel purporting to debate whether abortions should be legal after fetal viability date (i.e. is it OK to abort where, if there was a birth, the resulting baby would be able to live, either by himself or with help of machines).
WHAT THE HELL?!?!
While I have complicated feelings on abortion, I do believe that some abortions should be legal - if you know the fetus is non-viable, for example, it seems insane to force a woman to go through full gestation and birth only to deliver a corpse or someone who'd survive for 15 minutes outside the womb. I think those should be OK at any time. I think abortions for pregnancies which are result of rape or incest, or pose a severe health risk to the mother, are also OK. And, unlike pro-lifers, I don't happen to believe life begins at conception, so much as I find them personally morally repugnant absent criteria above, I believe first-trimester abortions should be legal across the board.
BUT. You know what all of the above have in common? NONE OF THEM ARE PERFORMED WHEN THE FETUS IS VIABLE OUTSIDE THE WOMB! Either the fetus in question is inviable period (due to severe defects) or they are performed before the fetus is viable.
If you perform an abortion on a viable-outside-the-womb fetus, you know what that is? That's right, murder. Now, sometimes murder is excusable (in the aforementioned 'you can only save the mother or the child, pick' scenario), but that is not what Jezebel is talking about. The article was arguing 'shouldn't women have choice all the way? Shouldn't they have more time to decide? Why do they have to carry it for an additional month when they want it out now etc etc." BARF. When a fetus is independently viable, it's a person and you don't get to kill a person merely because it's convenient. I am a libertarian, I am all for personal freedoms, but only when they don't impinge on freedoms of others, in this case the freaking live infant. Once that fetus becomes a person, it has rights, a right of not being murdered being one of them. I mean, I like to sleep in every morning but that doesn't mean I can go off and strangle my infant because I have to get up at 7am every day due to her and this is inconvenient! I can't throw her under a bus because taking care of a child is stressful and I hate it (for the record, I don't but this is a hypothetical) or it may cost me a career opportunity or lower my standard of living. You can't just get rid of a person to better yourself.
Seriously, Jezebel. WTF.