SB 50, introduced by Sen. Leising is one of those anti-abortion measures that makes me think the proponent doesn’t actually have a serious moral position against abortion but, rather, is just playing some kind of game with it.
This bill would require a pregnant woman seeking an abortion to obtain a fetal ultrasound imaging at least 18 hours prior to the abortion, to listen to the heart beat if audible, and view and receive a copy of the imaging. And, of course, foot the bill for this mandate herself.
The only justification for this proposed government micromanagement of a woman’s medical decisions is the notion that abortion involves the termination of a human life. But, if you do subscribe to the notion that a fetus is a human life, fully entitled to the moral rights of other humans, then this legislation is monstrous. Can you imagine the outrage if Sen. Leising proposed legislation that required, before murdering a child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old, the murderer watched film and listened to audio of his or her victim at least 18 hours in advance? It’s like a mandatory snuff film.
The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the proponents of this sort of thing don’t regard fetal life as fully human. In which case, government should stay out of our medical decisions.
“The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the proponents of this sort of thing don’t regard fetal life as fully human. In which case, government should stay out of our medical decisions. ”
Huh? Okay, you lost me on this one. You’re making it more complicated than it is. The numbers in support of abortion have declined over the past 10-15 years, almost certainly due to things like ultrasound which pretty much blows away the claim that it’s just a blob of “fetal material.” Pro-lifers believe that if people see it’s a human being via ultrasound, they’ll be less likely to choose abortion. And they’re probably right…it’s why the pro-choice crowd fights it so hard.
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You do know he can’t pass a law banning abortion, right?
Given that he can’t do that, doesn’t this law require the person having an abortion to make the choice if it is murder or not? It is almost like it is trying to test Mens rea.
That seems reasonable if we go by the assumption that for some, this is murder, and for some, it is clipping a toenail. This law seems to just ask the person “What do you believe?”
If the Supreme Court had decided that murdering children between the ages of 6 and 10 was a Constitutional Right, no, I would not consider it sensible to propose a measure that requires would-be murderers to enjoy movies of their victims in advance of the murder.
The fact is that it only seems sensible because, at some level, proponents know that a fetus isn’t equivalent to a human.
Did I really lose you on this one, Paul? Or was that a rhetorical “huh?”
If there was state-sanctioned murder of small children, you wouldn’t be content to fight it by asking people to pretty-please feel bad about what they were about to do. You’d take more direct and, if necessary, violent action. Murdering small children in cold blood is appalling and moderate resistance to such a thing would simply be insufficient.
But, the fact is that fetuses are different than small children and most everyone recognizes this difference – to a greater or lesser extent – whether they admit it to themselves or not.
So, I guess I’ll just ask directly: are fetuses morally different from small children or are they not? We can work from there.
To be logical,lets’s require anyone contemplating any operation to be required to watch that operation first through on a ceiling camera in the operating room.Then we decide what ‘we really want’.
I may never have had my tonsillectomy when I was 46 yrs old.That wouldn’t have been in my best interests.
Medical procedures are not all equal by any means,but what should be equal is the right for each of us to be in charge of our own medical decisions.
I’m reading this morning in newspapers that the Republicans’ main goal in next congress is to be repeal’ Obamacare’, what they call health care reform.
Im ready to get out my bullhorn and go through the streets warning : “The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!” It’s getting serious.
I’m trying to find the “limited government” in this new law.
And I could have sworn all these Republicans came into office because we’d given them a mandate to get the government out of our lives. That’s what they told us over & over.
I’ve got stop believing politicians when they speak.
So much for my “be less snarky” resolution in 2011.
let’s get serious here. a woman who goes in for an abortion has already decided that abortion is not murder (at least not in her circumstances).
the purpose of laws like this is to make abortion as inconvenient as possible. if you can’t ban it outright, make it expensive by requiring unneeded tests and ultrasounds, and impractical by forcing women to take additional time off work and make multiple visits to the clinic.
stAllio: “let’s get serious here. a woman who goes in for an abortion has already decided that abortion is not murder (at least not in her circumstances).”There are plenty of pregnant and confused teenagers that have made no such judgment yet, and are only doing what they are being told is the “best option.” You are correct that this bill would make it more expensive to obtain an abortion, however, the intention is most likely to educate and place hurdles of time and effort, and the hurdle of cost is a by-product.
Doug: the difference isn’t between a 5 year old and an unborn. The difference is between seen and unseen. It’s the same reason people are willing to give a dollar to a homeless guy or put it in a salvation army cup, but won’t make the same donation if the Salvation Army person isn’t present. This differentiation is not logical, but it is human nature.
So, am I correct in reading your response as meaning that you believe there is no moral distinction between a five year old’s right to life and a fetus’s right to life? Because the distinction you mention is as to the perception of that right by others.
Doug…. I am not sure I fully understand your comment (at least the last sentence of it). However, I’ll try to answer it in a non-personalized fashion (I am not confident in my valuation of unborn life and wish to avoid discussing my personal beliefs on this subject).
Very few people believe that abortion is still murder if the mother could lose her life in labor. So to those people (which I believe includes the “Indiana Right-To-Life” organization itself) the unborn’s right to life appears to be lesser than the born’s right to life. Still, how much less in value is the unborn’s life?
Example: If “pro-life” people were told about three seperate possible tragedies, (1) a 5 y/o neighbor losing his or her life, (2) a mother a mile away having a late-term abortion, or (3) a 5 y/o living 1000 miles away (or in another county) losing his or her life, I don’t claim to know whether situation (2) or (3) would be considered the bigger “tragedy. It’s possible that the presence of absence of a picture of (3) would change the results. Obviously, a picture of the possibly dead 5 y/o miles away shouldn’t logically change the respondent’s answer, but I don’t doubt that it would.
Thanks for that response, Paul. I don’t know that it makes much difference to the coherence of this thready, but for clarity’s sake, I’ll mention that I got confused about the two Pauls posting here. In my head, when I was writing the comment about moral distinctions, in my head, this was part of a back & forth with Paul Ogden. But, actually that wasn’t the case.
Doug,
You’ve brought this argument up before, and I’ve thought about it a lot. I will concede, yes, killing an unborn baby is different from killing a 5-year old. I still see them both as murder, one human killing another not out of self-protection. Some may feel that me shooting a man who burst into my house as murder, I would see it as self-protection.
The more I have thought about it, the less I grieve for the life of the unborn. Yes, it is sad that they will never have life, but I have to examine my own faith and decide if I believe they will have eternal life, and I do believe that.
When a 5-year old is murdered, who do you feel the most sadness for? Their life, or the pain of their family that lost the 5-year old? I personally find that I go right to “Wow, I don’t know how I would handle that if I lost my daughter like that”, thinking of the parent more than “Wow, what things will that 5-year old never get to do growing up, etc…”
From that standpoint, it is hard for anyone to feel the same sadness when an unborn child is killed, because, like Paul said, the seen and unseen makes a difference. When my wife and I lost a child through miscarriage, the compassion we had was FAR less than someone who lost a 2-week old child. I even had to fight for her to have bereavement time from her job.
Personally, I have decided to focus my efforts more on my own faith and sharing it with others than trying for laws like this. I have come to the conclusion that many of the things Christians oppose that the government either allows or operates (Welfare, Abortion, etc) are a failure of the church, not of government. If Christians had been doing their job (“Go and make disciples of all nations” & “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s [in other words, don’t get to tied up in what the government is or isn’t doing]), then these things would be non-issues. There would be no market for abortions, and there would be no need for welfare if Christians were more Christ-like.
Sorry for the long post, just trying to share my POV and also say that while I might not care one way or another about this law, I don’t doubt the guy’s credibility just because he isn’t blowing up abortion clinics.
Outstanding comment, Jason. Thanks for that.
I don’t have time at the moment to try to dredge up the details, let alone explain them, but back in college, I took a philosophy seminar on “valuing life.” My conclusion (not original, I’m sure) about how one values life – as a practical matter, but arguably as a moral matter – has to do with one’s social proximity to that life. That ends up meaning that I value the life of my healthy 5 year old dog more than the life of a terminally ill human on the other side of the world. And I’m fairly comfortable with that valuation. The questions get tougher as the social proximity gets closer. Your discussion of who you feel sadness for made me think of that.
I dreaded reading your post, which was more tone-deaf than I feared, as I thought I’d have to respond at length. But others are doing that quite ably and I have some other priorities tonight.
Okeedoke.
Well then, Doug, allow me to be more tone-deaf than you.
May I mention, first, how nice it is that just us guys can get together, toss a few back, and solve this reproductive rights thing?
Second, it’s all a crock. The argument blasted into hyperreality five minutes after Roe was released, and it’s never returned. There are (as I write) thirteen mentions of “murder” in comments, probably about par for a discussion of that length; tell me what “murder”, or someone’s opinion of what constitutes murder, has to do with the Constitutional right of reproductive choice? Or I’ll tell you: nothing beyond its use as a buzzword in a partisan attempt to enforce some people’s Bronze Age beliefs.
This is the result of forty years of abortion opponents being allowed to live a privileged life: permitted to issue moral edicts, but not called on them. Indiana Right to Life is allowed to grant exceptions Why? Once it admits its moral absolutes aren’t absolute there’s nothing left. It’s allowed to claim “the life of the mother” is paramount, but it leads the crusade against the safest medical procedure designed to save that life late-term. The movement doesn’t get called on contraception. It doesn’t get called on the legal or practical consequences of the state’s invasion of the womb, and it doesn’t get called on the history of abortion law. It’s never asked to address who we’re going to let out of prison to make room for all those murdering doctors and pregnant women. It sure doesn’t require its chosen candidates to make nutrition or medical care available to those innocent fetuses who happen to inhabit the wombs of the impoverished, and if that Innocent manages to make it out alive anyway, he’s on his own, at least until he’s old enough to join the Army. Since no one has any moral objections to that.
One other thing to keep in mind. May abortion opponents base their views on religious views, often with regard to when life begins. However, other religious traditions have different understandings of that fundamental question. Judaism, for example, does not subscribe to the “life begins at conception” model and allows for abortion in most cases until shortly before birth. When the life of the mother or fetus is at stake, the life of the mother always wins. Thus, while I recognize that the issue of abortion is of religious importance to many, I have difficulty with those people edeavoring to enforce their religious understandings on those who hold different views and understandings.
Doug… I appreciate your posts because they make me think. This post is more thought provoking than most. After my post above, I thought a bit more about this concern and wonder…..
Isn’t the same issue true for those that are pro-choice? If a pro-choice believer doesn’t believe that an unborn fetus is a life, and they do believe (similarly to Indiana’s own Dawn Johnsen) that requiring a woman to carry a life is akin to slavery or indentured servitude to the fetus, shouldn’t these people be doing more than what they are doing to allow these women access to abortions?
I have not heard about large donations or non-profit organizations which assist women without financial resources to travel from restrictive states to states which allow late(r) term abortions. Why not?
I’m just going to observe, with curiosity, why only men join in the conversations about abortion. Not just here, but seemingly everywhere. I’m truly stumped by this.
Around this blog, it’s probably because I don’t seem to attract all that many women in general. Elsewhere, I couldn’t say.
I’m a female. Abortion decisions are a personal decision that a female makes according to her personal values. It is not a government issue.
However, if there were legislation forcing the (typically) absent biological father of these fetuses to parent them when the mother dosn’t want to, then I might reconsider. I am safe in saying that, because it will NEVER happen. Notice, for example, that the father of the father is not mentioned in this legal requirement. Nor is the biological father on the hook for paying for anything. No one should legislate the decisions I make about my reproduction. And why aren’t the irresponsible men ever held accountable. Funny, I don’t see right-to-lifers with households full of adopted would-have-been-aborted babies. Why?
S Faust:
As soon as the biological father has the right to decide if his child is aborted, then I’d support making all of these rules apply equally.
As you said, though, the law currently only regards this as the woman’s choice, so it really doesn’t matter what the father wants.
Again, I really look forward to the day that we can raise a child from conception without a woman’s womb. It would give many people that feel abortion is murder the chance to raise these unwanted children. It would also allow responsible fathers the right to raise their kids without getting into a debate about womb slavery.
I know some. They usually don’t advertise the fact that the biological mother of the kids they are raising had to be convinced *not* to kill them and instead allow them to be born and then raised by others. It doesn’t exactly make for dinner conversation.
Again, I am hopeful that science will ultimately convince people that these embryos are humans, and will also provide compromises that both sides can live with.
Lastly, I agree that irresponsible fathers are left off the hook. Personally, I would rather live in a world where the dads not only have a say in the life (or not) of their unborn child, but are legally obligated to pay for everything, be it abortion, adoption, or birth, regardless of the status of their relationship to the mother.