It seems to me that if you truly believe that an abortion is murdering a human, then the penalty should be the same as the murder of a human who is already born. In other words, a very long prison sentence or the death penalty (depending on locale).
However, if you think that penalty is too severe, then do you really believe it is murder when you have an abortion?
Well and more important: all the rules that kick in when someone is born should kick in at day one of the personhood. Tax breaks, social support, etc.
But it is not about personhood, it is not about murder — this is about sex and giving the state the power to enforce prude religious ideas. Which is why there are open discussions about banning contraception as well.
The idea: Sex should only be had for the purpose of generating offspring. It should never be enjoyed. This is the believe, and anyone has to follow it, so it needs to become law.
Let's say that I agree that abortion is wrong (which is true enough).
Under what circumstances should a miscarriage be investigated as a criminal matter? In this question I include any involved parties. Prosecuting a woman's relatives or loved ones is tantamount to prosecuting her.
Under what circumstances should a healthcare decision be investigated as a criminal matter?
If it is about an innocent life, then which states added funding for healthcare and child care as a part of their abortion trigger laws? Which states restored planned parenthood funding?
I don't think abortion is GOOD. I also don't think it's any of the government's business. Making abortion illegal does not make anyone any more moral. Making abortion illegal does not change anyone's mind about the morality of abortion. Making abortion illegal will not save anyone's soul from damnation. Making abortion illegal WILL increase the number of kids born to mothers in poverty.
> Under what circumstances should a miscarriage be investigated as a criminal matter?
Under what circumstances do we investigate the death of a newborn as a criminal matter today?
> If it is about an innocent life, then which states added funding for healthcare and child care as a part of their abortion trigger laws? Which states restored planned parenthood funding?
I don't understand the line of thinking that says you can't care about stopping intentional killings unless you also want to give them a bunch of free stuff. Example: Able-bodied adults need food to live. I don't want murder of able-bodied adults to be legal. That doesn't mean that I should have to pay for every other able-bodied adult's food for them.
> Under what circumstances do we investigate the death of a newborn as a criminal matter today?
Are you absolutely sure you want to apply the same standard? Do you know how many pregnancies end in miscarriage?
> I don't understand the line of thinking that says you can't care about stopping intentional killings unless you also want to give them a bunch of free stuff.
It's not about the free stuff. When the power of the state stepped in to force the pregnancy to continue, they took responsibility for the life of the person.
You care about "intentional killings of babies". I believe that. I believe that you can imagine the life of the potential person when you see a pregnancy. Do you believe that people should be able to have sex without getting pregnant? Is preventing the fertilization of the egg an acceptable way to prevent the "intentional killing of a baby"? Should the power of the state enforce your belief about contraception? Is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall acceptable? Should the power of the state step in here?
At what point in the act of intimacy should the power of the state be enforced?
> When the power of the state stepped in to force the pregnancy to continue, they took responsibility for the life of the person.
If the state stops someone from killing me, do they take responsibility for my life from then on too?
> Do you believe that people should be able to have sex without getting pregnant? Is preventing the fertilization of the egg an acceptable way to prevent the "intentional killing of a baby"?
I think both of those should remain legal.
> Should the power of the state enforce your belief about contraception?
No.
> Is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall acceptable?
No. Once the egg gets fertilized, it's too late for contraception to work, and anything from then on that appears to be contraception is actually just a very early term abortion.
> Should the power of the state step in here?
Yes.
> At what point in the act of intimacy should the power of the state be enforced?
Once conception (i.e., fertizilation) has occurred.
> If the state stops someone from killing me, do they take responsibility for my life from then on too?
Do you really believe this is equivalent? You can't see any distinction here?
> Once conception (i.e., fertizilation) has occurred.
Do you know the percentage of fertilized eggs that make it to the uterine wall? That make it through the first week of pregnancy? That make it through the first trimester?
Should couples register their fertilized eggs with the government so they can be tracked?
> Do you really believe this is equivalent? You can't see any distinction here?
I assume the distinction that you want me to draw is that I'm an independent adult, and the baby isn't. Consider instead, then, if the government saved a toddler's life. Unless the parents died, or were themselves trying to commit the murder and so are now in jail, responsibility for the child in the future will remain with them and not with the government.
> Do you know the percentage of fertilized eggs that make it to the uterine wall? That make it through the first week of pregnancy? That make it through the first trimester?
I know it's low. But the fact that natural deaths are common in a certain situation doesn't automatically make intentional killings in that situation okay. For example, even though the survival rate of Zaire ebolavirus is only 10-17%, it's still murder if you kill someone who has Ebola.
> Should couples register their fertilized eggs with the government so they can be tracked?
No, we don't need more government tracking, and the right to life shouldn't be conditional on being tracked by the government.
Which brings me back to my original question: When should a miscarriage be investigated by the government. Not "when does life start". Not "is abortion morally wrong". Not "is abortion murder". When should the government get involved?
If 50% of fertilized eggs are naturally lost in the first week, how do you decide which should be investigated by the government? Should the government be examining women for IUDs?
> Unless the parents died, or were themselves trying to commit the murder and so are now in jail, responsibility for the child in the future will remain with them and not with the government.
So the mother carries the baby to term. Can she simply leave the hospital without paying after giving birth? Does she have to take the baby home? Does she have to love the baby? Does the government get to enforce that too?
When there's some reason to believe that it might have been intentional.
> If 50% of fertilized eggs are naturally lost in the first week, how do you decide which should be investigated by the government? Should the government be examining women for IUDs?
Couldn't very early abortions like that be effectively stopped just by banning the pills that are meant to cause them, without having to investigate early miscarriages at all? And no, the government generally shouldn't be examining women for IUDs, since that would constitute an unreasonable search without probable cause.
> Can she simply leave the hospital without paying after giving birth?
I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. How would this be any different than leaving the hospital after getting a cast put on a broken bone without paying, or leaving a restaurant after eating without paying?
> Does she have to take the baby home? Does she have to love the baby?
No, she can give the baby up for adoption instead.
> When there's some reason to believe that it might have been intentional.
> Couldn't very early abortions like that be effectively stopped just by banning the pills that are meant to cause them, without having to investigate early miscarriages at all?
It feels very good to be on the righteous side of an argument. Righteousness is a very powerful emotion. It feels good to defend life. It is easy to imagine the future baby.
It feels like preventing a needless death. But most fertilized eggs probably don't make it to live birth. That's a stark fact that does not feel good.
> I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. How would this be any different than leaving the hospital after getting a cast put on a broken bone without paying, or leaving a restaurant after eating without paying?
Because she did not choose to be there. She did not want to go down this path. If a bully breaks your kid's arm, should their family pay the doctor bills? If your date takes you to a restaurant you don't want to go to, should you have to pay the bill?
> No, she can give the baby up for adoption instead.
I don't know you or your religious beliefs, but many people who believe that 'life begins at conception' arrive at that belief through their faith. I would ask that you examine your heart for empathy, and see if your beliefs are consistent with your values, especially when it comes to the power given to the state.
It also seems that you are willing to cut the power of the state very very fine - intentional killing of a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing an infant, but the state does not have a catalog or any way of knowing about all fertilized eggs, so how does it know when to investigate?
The state has no right to know about a woman's IUD, but does have a right to know if she has taken steps to stop that fertilized egg from developing further, if I understand your position correctly.
We get our belief system from our family and friends. We see their values and we see what works for them. We feel righteous when we defend those values. This is true for everyone. It's not "both sides" it's "all humans".
I personally view humankind as my cousins. I don't like all my cousins, I don't agree with everything they do. Some need help, some need to be stopped by force, some are greedy, some are kind. If we're all cousins, then we all have rights, and we have to decide how to balance those rights. A pregnant woman has rights, and an unborn child has rights, and those do need to be balanced. I am comfortable putting the balancing point at some measure of 'viability'. I am not a specialist in pregnancy, so I don't know exactly when that is, but it's definitely not at the moment of conception.
> the state does not have a catalog or any way of knowing about all fertilized eggs, so how does it know when to investigate?
> The state has no right to know about a woman's IUD, but does have a right to know if she has taken steps to stop that fertilized egg from developing further, if I understand your position correctly.
The state can make something illegal without needing intrusive investigative powers to be able to find it. Consider that CSAM is illegal, even though we don't have a national registry of cameras or hard drives, and the government isn't allowed to search your cameras or hard drives for CSAM without probable cause.
That doesn’t follow. The law applies differing treatment at different stages of life in many contexts. We have different social programs that kick in for young people versus old people, for example. And we do have social programs specifically for pregnant women.
As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive? Because it makes no sense to me. Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else. What they reject is the premise that destroying a human life must be legal to maintain the fiction that sex is without consequences. (Note that the vast majority of republicans support legalized contraception, at about the same rate as democrats: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-most-americans-will-balk-if-cons...)
> As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive?
The argument is of course completely bonkers, but this is the thinking behind it — and I grew up in a deeply catholic area: You just need to talk to those people and ask them "Why" a few times and you will end up there. The church seeing itself as a torch of morality in questions like:
- when do people have sex?
- what do women wear?
This is nothing new and not limited to catholics. If they control your private life they control your life.
IMO church should limit itself to questions of spirituality and be kept out of the state, law and private lives of the rest of us at all cost.
> Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else.
They view it as both depending on what suits them. They view it as a punishment for promiscuous sex, and a reward for people trying to have children. More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
My favorite thought experiment is to follow the belief in the soul of the hypothetical person in the womb into the hypothetical afterlife to explore the consequences of abortion (and miscarriage, which is when the supreme deity performs the abortion). Do these hypothetical people go to heaven? If so, heaven is full of souls who never experienced life at all, they just woke up in heaven. There are millions upon millions of happy souls in heaven who never had to endure a single trial or make a conscious choice to get there. This seems like an amazing hack! Indeed, you could operate a fertility clinic and singlehandedly dominate the demographics of the afterlife. Furthermore, if hypothetical people who never become real automatically go to heaven, abortion would seem like the best thing you can do for them. There's no chance they'll ever be tempted into sin and end up in hell.
However, some Calvinists will tell you that predestination means that the terminated pregnancy (which, remember, the divine hand has personally performed in majority of cases) has derailed the divine plan, and some of the hypothetical people were going to make choices that landed them in hell. So they arbitrarily come into existence and spend eternity in endless, vicious torment, placed there by the deity who allegedly is a being of pure love. This is even more dark and mind-twisting! It means that there are millions upon millions of souls in hell, suffering eternal torment and they have no idea why they're there.
> They view it as a punishment for promiscuous sex, and a reward for people trying to have children.
Why don't you try to steel-man the opposing view? E.g. (a) children are a blessing; and (b) the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given (a).
This formulation explains the opposition to abortion, and is internally consistent.
> More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
If you aren't aware that religious conservatives (like nearly everyone else) view children and motherhood as a blessing for women, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe spend some time in Africa or Asia and you might realize that it's not just something the GOP made up to piss off Democrats.
> If you aren't aware that religious conservatives (like nearly everyone else) view children and motherhood as a blessing for women, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't think it's safe to conflate religious fundamentalists with 'everyone else.' For everyone else, a wanted child is a blessing. An unplanned pregnancy ranges from a major misfortune to a potentially fatal crisis. Furthermore:
> the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given
Pregnancy isn't really a natural and predictable consequence of sex, in fact it's a pretty unusual outcome of intercourse. Humans, compared to other primates, must engage in a relatively huge amount of intercourse to end up with a pregnancy. There's also the minor detail of those being most opposed to abortion also being the most opposed to birth control. You'd think if reducing abortion was the goal, birth control would be foremost on everyone's mind. So no, it's not internally consistent in this framework. It is internally consistent with a framework where women are chattel and their autonomy over their bodies to decide the outcome of their pregnancy is viewed as theft from their owners.
There is another position: that in principle the penalties should be the same, but that in practice the culture doesn't yet see the lives of the unborn as as valuable as the lives of the born, and that putting the punishment too far in front of where the median voter stands is counterproductive to the cause. As the rights of the unborn gain more universal acceptance, the penalties for violating them should be increased.
All of these comprise scientific bases for the range of "pro life" positions.
> Many countries legalized abortion over the past 20 years; very few went the other way.
So what? Eugenics was seen as a progressive advance in the early 20th century, before humanity reversed course. "Progress" doesn't happen in an arc, but hits dead ends.
They are also all irrelevant. We don’t force parents to donate organs for life-saving transplants; why would we have a different rule specifically for uterus?
Worth pointing out you’re comparing the idea of bodily autonomy, one of basic human rights, with eugenics, because it opposes a certain religious superstition.
In the case of abortion, the default (inaction) means the baby lives, whereas having an abortion is an active action which ends the “life” (I don’t entirely believe it’s a life up to a certain point, but just conceding it for the sake of argument).
In the case of forced organ donation, not donating unfortunately results in the death of the other person, but that’s the default state (inaction).
For those with agency, we place greater moral weight on active actions than on the absence of action.
I'm curious, do you not agree that the life in the womb is valid, or is it that you don't even agree it's a life?
In other words, is it that you acknowledge what is inside _is_ a life but you reject the validity of its right to be alive ? or do you _not_ agree that it is a life in the first place, therefore it couldn't possibly have a right to be alive?
Neither - that alternative only makes sense if you assume at most high school level of knowledge of biology. If you knew anything more, you’d see how absurd it is - for example you’d know what a mole pregnancy is and how it demolishes that assumption you’ve made above.
This, btw, is a common element of Catholic ideology - a lot of it is literal bullshit written in a way to make it hard to parse; one cornerstone of it is abusing the language, but another is exploiting people’s ignorance.
That doesn’t follow at all. The law recognizes numerous degrees of culpability even for intentional killing of another human (e.g. premeditated versus not). In Texas, second degree murder carries a penalty of 2 to 20 years.
In most states, first-degree murder is defined as an unlawful killing that is both willful and premeditated.
So, it comes back to my first argument - if you really think that an abortion is the murder of a human, then it is in the first degree, right? And if so, the penalty would be pretty high. Are you OK with that?
> So, it comes back to my first argument - if you really think that an abortion is the murder of a human, then it is in the first degree, right?
Why would that follow logically? Willfulness and premeditation are two aggravating factors that make first degree murder “worse” than lesser degrees of murder. That doesn’t mean that those are the only factors that can be used to distinguish different degrees of culpability for killing a human. The law of homicide is extremely sensitive to context and circumstances.
It’s entirely consistent to believe on one hand that abortion is murder (intentional killing of a human being), and to believe on the other hand that the circumstances are mitigating factors that lessen the gravity of the offense.
It’s even consistent to believe that abortion is murder, but doesn’t warrant any punishment at all—like killing in self defense. Under German constitutional law, for example, abortion is deemed a deprivation of a right to life that begins at conception. But the German constitutional court has held that, nonetheless, the state doesn’t necessarily need to criminally penalize it.
The penalty for murder is highly variable. Murder of small child is often a pittance compared to an adult.
There are other arguments involved. Was the murder brutal? Did people depend on the victim? Children have no dependents, though this is offset by the vulnerability and future life of the victim.
Moreover, if abortion is murder, then there ought be no exception for rape, as killing children for psychological relief ought be a repugnant exchange.
And the insurance companies, doctors, and medical groups involved are basically in an industry of assembly line baby murder for money. The culpability of doctors cannot be the same.
Pro-choice people seem to want it both ways when it comes to exceptions for rape. If there is an exception for rape, they say the pro-life law is bad because "see, it's not really about the lives of the children, it's just to control women's sexual choices". And if there's not an exception for rape, they say the pro-life law is bad because "look at all these really young rape victims who will now be forced to bear their rapists' children".
Thanks for reminding me why the only correct person to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is the mother, no matter how much you may dislike the outcome.
My point is that if you're against an exception for rape victims, then any arguments you make against pro-life laws that only apply when such an exception doesn't exist should be completely discounted.
Huh? I am against such "exceptions" because I don't think there's any good result where the government has the right to force women to remain pregnant even when they have compelling reasons to not want to do so.
Abortion should be criminal when it can't done safely or is not done by a suitably trained professional, that's the only case I do accept a law is needed. And the US is going to see a lot more of such abortions in coming months/years.
>It seems to me that if you truly believe that an abortion is murdering a human, then the penalty should be the same as the murder of a human who is already born.
I fully agree with it. The punishments for murdering unborn children are too mild. They should be more severe.
Ask people who think that a pregnant woman is carrying around an unborn human if they agree that all the other laws that apply to humans and children should apply to these "unborn humans".
To anyone reading this thread and thinking pro-lifers aren't really this extreme, yes, they really truly are.
Many absolutely want the death penalty for abortion, or at least murder level prison sentence.
No amount of logic and reasoning gets to them. No arguments about the value of the mother's life. No arguments about the legal protections of bodily autonomy, and the slippery slope of setting precedent to violate that. No education about the inherent messiness of pregnancy and difficulty to actually tell the difference between a natural miscarriage (medically termed 'spontaneous abortion') and an intentional abortion. No nuance on the chilling effect for doctors who will start to refuse to give women the treatment they need when it risks unintentionally causing a miscarriage.
These people have an extremely underdeveloped concept of morality and ethics, where everything is black and white. And they pose an immense danger of ripping us as a society back into the dark ages of justice.
I say this as someone who was raised deeply religious and ravenously prolife. I marched in protest with life tape over my mouth and in front of abortion clinics as a child. This is really how these people think.
>No arguments about the legal protections of bodily autonomy,
It's not about your body autonomy, it's about taking the life of an unborn child, who clearly does not not belong to your body as he has a different DNA.
If you want body autonomy, you can pull a tooth or cut a finger.
If an unborn child is really independent of the mother's body, then you should be able to take it out - it is independent after all! If it doesn't belong to my body, what responsibility do I have for it?
As in an emergency C-section? If it's late enough in the pregnancy that doing so wouldn't unnecessarily harm the baby, then I'd think it would be fine.
So you believe that if the fetus is incapable of life outside the womb, the woman is legally obligated to keep it parasitically attached to her? That's a new right that no other person has, and you have to legally justify why a fetus has this special right.
At what point in pregnancy do you believe a fetus becomes a person deserving of protection under the law that violates a woman's right to bodily autonomy and privacy?
> So you believe that if the fetus is incapable of life outside the womb, the woman is legally obligated to keep it parasitically attached to her? That's a new right that no other person has, and you have to legally justify why a fetus has this special right.
If you discover a stowaway on your airplane while you're in the air, you're legally obligated to keep him onboard until you land. This isn't a new right, though, it's just his right to life trumping your right to property.
> At what point in pregnancy do you believe a fetus becomes a person deserving of protection under the law that violates a woman's right to bodily autonomy and privacy?
Magical thinking. You are dangerously misinformed on the medicine side and overloaded with medieval fantasy.
Those of us that actually live in the 21st century just look at your belief structure as naive — however we are now in a different phase where your ignorance is causing real harm. I read today that Drs are too scared to prescribe potentially life saving but potentially teratogenic medicine in forced-birth states due to miscarriage risk. Absolutely unacceptable! Get your medieval bullshit out of our modern world.
So you're holding the well being of poor children (whom everyone agrees are people with rights) hostage for the sake of not yet viable or autonomous fetuses?
I don't believe non viable or non autonomous fetuses are people. But even if they are, nobody has the right to live if they must be parasitically attached to another person's body, including you or I. Someone can certainly volunteer themselves to save a person in that position, but they can't be legally forced into it.
There's an argument to be made that I can agree with that more developed fetuses that are close to birth and can theoretically survive out of the womb should be extracted alive, but abortions of that kind are an extreme minority of all abortions.
It doesn't matter what I think. Now states can decide for themselves without having the federal government force them. Because everyone is pro-life beyond a certain threshold - its just a question of when.
Why is state the right level to decide? There's a ton of variety of opinions within states. Why not leave the decision to the county level? Why does the state get to force their decision on counties?
Then again, there's a ton of variety of opinion within counties. Rural and urban areas are often starkly opposed. So why does the majority opinion of the whole county get forced on everyone?
Then again, there's a ton of variety between households in any locality. Why should the larger locality get to force it's majority opinion on dissenting households?
Then again, there's variety of opinion between individuals in a household. Why does the majority opinion of the household get forced on dissenting individuals?
The weird obsession with states rights isn't a genuine argument. It's just the level of authority that allows your particular opinion to get maximum power over people, because it can't win at the federal level.
If you actually cared about overbearing government on this issue, you would argue to leave the decision up to the people directly affected, and be pro-choice.
> you would argue to leave the decision up to the people directly affected
Sure, let's do this. Just make sure you require unanimous consent, count the baby as one of the people directly affected, and don't treat a lack of a clear, conscious response as "yes, I'm okay with being killed".
I also support the rights of unborn persons, but I don't support giving them extra special rights that born people don't have.
I do not have the right to force you to give me your kidney, even if I need it to stay alive. Even if you intentionally poisoned me and that's the reason I need a new kidney, I still don't have the right to violate your bodily autonomy to take it.
Why do you believe fetuses have the special right to violate a person's bodily autonomy?
Because of the unique circumstances /temporary biological dependence.
Murder is a permanent solution to a temporary problem (dependence). The right of the fetus to life outweighs the right of the mother to not be inconvenienced.
I also support things like mandatory maternal leave, better access to healthcare, etc. I just don’t support the termination of otherwise-viable pregnancies for convenience, which is the VAST majority of cases.
>The right of the fetus to life outweighs the right of the mother to not be inconvenienced.
A fetus that cannot survive in the abscence of the mother is not a human being. It is a clump of cells, little more than an unusually organized tumor.
I find your rhetoric less than persuasive. Are you going to accept responsibility for the inevitable consequence of the unavailibility of abortion? Not in the executive's airy sense of "I'm willing to accept that risk" but tangibly, on the dotted line, in the "every unplanned pregnancy taken to completion is your problem now" sense? Are you going to accept the responsibility for their rearing in a loving, stable household? Are you going to commit to the lifelong sacrifice that is parenting those children? Are you willing to pay, in time and taxes for the State to be able to fund and hire proxy parents, and to administer the higher number of wards of the State?
Unless you are, I believe you have no place trying to push the things you are on other people. As abortions often short-circuit lifetimes worth of suffering that would be on the horizon for the unborn, because existence in the world without that is surely thus; you are the one condemning them. If you aren't already taking in babies, your pontifications about the relative virtue of someone else's exercise of bodily autonomy don't ring to me as the basis for reasonable State enforced policy.
I don't shortchange my countrymens' liberties, and I'm willing to be convinced to see your view if your group is willing to prove to me they have skin in the game. If you're just trying to push policy out of some misguided sense of "it's the popular thing to do", begone.
If you're ready to talk orphanages and more spending on social workers which includes a living wage, and sufficient funding to hire, retain, and train sufficient numbers of them to make a reasonable dent in the increased case load this will inevitably create, and real penalties and teeth to things like abusive treatment in facilities for wards of the State. Then we can talk.
No guarantees on being convinced, but I can entertain hearing it out.
> A fetus that cannot survive in the abscence of the mother is not a human being.
Were polio victims who couldn't survive in the absence of iron lungs also not human beings?
> Are you going to accept the responsibility for their rearing in a loving, stable household? Are you going to commit to the lifelong sacrifice that is parenting those children? Are you willing to pay, in time and taxes for the State to be able to fund and hire proxy parents, and to administer the higher number of wards of the State?
Is it okay to want post-birth infanticide to stay illegal without being willing to accept full responsibility for everyone else's unwanted children who are already born?
You can't be forced to donate your kidney, but if you previously decided to do so (or even if it were harvested from you without your permission), you can't later kill the recipient to take it back.
A better analogy is if you need continuous blood donations.
Even if I consent to give you some now, I'm not obligated to continue to give it to you every day, even if you'll die without it and it's only for 9 months.
Moral reprehensible? Maybe. Legally enforceable. No. That's a rabid hole of allowing the government to violate people's bodily autonomy and privacy that you really don't want to go down.
Dont talk to me about hurting people. You literally support chopping children up in the womb - people who suffer and die alone, for the sake of convenience.
Preventing a fertilized egg from implanting is not chopping a child up, but that is one form of abortion. It is a potential child, it is a microscopic clump of cells.
Please note that many times these pregnancies self terminate (miscarry), which could be construed as God aborting the pregnancy (if one believes in such).
> Please note that many times these pregnancies self terminate (miscarry), which could be construed as God aborting the pregnancy (if one believes in such).
SIDS is a thing too, but that doesn't mean it should be okay to intentionally kill newborns.
I am wondering about the implications if an organization (charitable or otherwise) located in a state that allows abortions provides travel expenses to someone coming from Texas (or other states banning abortion) into a state that allows abortions? What if an organization provides relocation assistance (including travel, moving expenses, help with job hunting, etc) to someone relocating to a state that allows abortions? Can Texas charge someone who did not have an abortion in Texas, or someone who has stopped being a resident of Texas?
That's the attempt which actually breaks states' autonomy rights, so a state say... NY will be able to charge the seller of a gun if that gun was ever used in NY if it didn't meet the strict NY background check requirement, even in the case of a gun show.
That can't make sense otherwise any state can make laws for other states. Effectively allowing each state to be a federal-level lawmaker.
This is clearly unconstitutional, but of course, it all depends on the insanity of the current SCOTUS.
It’s well established that sovereign entities have the right to regulate the conduct of their citizens even abroad. For example the FCPA which makes Americans liable for bribery that occurs in foreign countries. Or American federal income taxes which are based on citizenship.
That changes when someone relinquishes their citizenship, however. As to American states, relinquishing citizenship is as easy as relocating to another state and taking steps indicating intent to change your residence permanently, such as changing your driver’s license or voter registration.
Thus providing relocation assistance is on different legal footing than paying for abortions out of state.
I'm looking forward to the lawsuits challenging this. I'm not 100% sure how they'll turn out, but it'll be nice to have big corporations spending their money on protecting something I agree should be protected, for a change.
Either stay and take the staffing and hiring hits or boogie. How much are those tax breaks worth? We might see ob-gyn docs relocating which will screw everybody if it happens. If they can’t get liability insurance or clear guidance on what they’re allowed to do they’re crazy to stay.
It may come down to companies offering a more generic 'medical travel benefits'. Something like, "If a medical service is not available locally, employee can recieve $xxxx in travel benefits per year to obtain that service." At that point, the company can disclaim knowlege of what medical services have been obtained, and then it is soley up to the employee.
It seems to me that if you truly believe that an abortion is murdering a human, then the penalty should be the same as the murder of a human who is already born. In other words, a very long prison sentence or the death penalty (depending on locale).
However, if you think that penalty is too severe, then do you really believe it is murder when you have an abortion?