|
New Twists in the Abortion Debate
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Renegade |
| quote: | — It was nearly Valentine’s Day, 1992, when Tracy Marciniak’s estranged husband, Glenndale Black, showed up at her Wisconsin apartment. A 28-year-old mother of two, Marciniak was expecting another baby in just five days. But the night was hardly romantic. Within hours, the two argued and Black punched her in the stomach.
The baby, whom she’d already named Zachariah, had seemed fine on a prenatal visit just the day before, she says. But when she arrived at the hospital that night, doctors couldn’t find his heartbeat. Marciniak pulled through, but the baby did not.
Because Zachariah was not considered a “born person,” prosecutors could not charge Black with homicide. They attempted to try him under an old state law banning illegal abortion, but Black’s lawyer argued that the baby would have been stillborn anyway. In the end, a jury convicted Black of reckless injury and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. Though Marciniak has long supported abortion rights, she became furious when she discovered that the law didn’t protect her unborn son—and that women’s groups wouldn’t back her quest for a state law punishing his killer. Now she is allied with the National Right to Life, appearing in an ad for the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act. “There were two victims,” Marciniak says. “He got away with murder.” |
| quote: | | Along with forcing Americans into more-nuanced stances, the new science is also fanning longstanding, divisive political feuds—over the legality and morality of ending a pregnancy, about the rights of a woman versus the rights of an embryo or fetus, and, ultimately, over the meaning of human life. Abortion foes hope to take advantage of the new technology and sympathetic political environment to win fresh support. For their part, abortion-rights activists worry that the new focus on the fetus is part of a broad strategy to undermine the very bedrock of Roe v. Wade. |
http://www.msnbc.com/news/920645.asp?vts=060220030850
It's a bit of a read, but, briefly, it highlights the new subtle legal and technological nuances slipping into the abortion debate, and how it's no longer quite as easy to be simply pro-life or pro-choice.
Specifically:
1) Should those who, through violence or any other means, terminate a "wanted" pregancy be charged with murder? If the fetus is given these rights, is this likely to jeopardise the decision made in the Roe vs Wade case? Can you be an advocate of fetal rights and still be pro-choice?
2) Could those pro-lifers opposed to amniocentesis (http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/327.html) be charged if they give birth to a disabled child, when the condition could have been prevented if it had been identified earlier?
3) Is it more immoral to use fetuses in stem-cell research, or to allow your own child to die where medical advances from stem-cell research could have otherwise saved it?
4) Should people need to obtain a "death warrant" before having an abortion? What conditions should you need to pass before you could obtain one?
Any thoughts? |
|
|
| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | 1) Should those who, through violence or any other means, terminate a "wanted" pregancy be charged with murder? If the fetus is given these rights, is this likely to jeopardise the decision made in the Roe vs Wade case? Can you be an advocate of fetal rights and still be pro-choice?
|
I think they should. Now, as far as being both pro-choice and advocating fetal rigts at the same time, it's pretty contradictory. Still, there are many contradictorious people out there so I guess you could be both.
| quote: | | 2) Could those pro-lifers opposed to amniocentesis (http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/327.html) be charged if they give birth to a disabled child, when the condition could have been prevented if it had been identified earlier? |
Here too I'd say yes, because that basically is limiting the availability of medical aid to an individual.
| quote: | | 3) Is it more immoral to use fetuses in stem-cell research, or to allow your own child to die where medical advances from stem-cell research could have otherwise saved it? |
Here I'd say that the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few. While a couple of fetuses will die, innumerable lives could be saved in the future |
|
|
| Nadi |
I think your stance on this has to be the same as your overall stance on abortion.
I mean if you think its ok to kill the fetus because it's unborn and it has no rights, than it should be ok to kill a fetus because its unborn and has no rights.
Similarly if you think that abortion is wrong and a fetus has rights, than regardless of how it's killed it's still a murder.
I guess what I'm saying is that the end act is the same, weather or not it should be illegal depends on your view of abortion. However people who are pro-choice could try to get him for some sort of emotional damage caused by killing the fetus. |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nadi
I think your stance on this has to be the same as your overall stance on abortion.
I mean if you think its ok to kill the fetus because it's unborn and it has no rights, than it should be ok to kill a fetus because its unborn and has no rights.
Similarly if you think that abortion is wrong and a fetus has rights, than regardless of how it's killed it's still a murder.
I guess what I'm saying is that the end act is the same, weather or not it should be illegal depends on your view of abortion. However people who are pro-choice could try to get him for some sort of emotional damage caused by killing the fetus. |
More or less agree. However I think the fetus in this case was something like 5 days due? I think that past the 3rd trimester the fetus is then considered a human life and as such should be afforded the rights of a human being.
And I'm all for stem cell research. |
|
|
| DrummeRaver86 |
| Stem cell research will save lives in the future. Why does everyone think that these researchers are malicious? And if you ask (off topic) we've already cloned a human, but they just haven't told us....:tongue3 |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrummeRaver86
Stem cell research will save lives in the future. Why does everyone think that these researchers are malicious? And if you ask (off topic) we've already cloned a human, but they just haven't told us....:tongue3 |
Because to many pro-lifers a fetus at something rediculous like day 20 conception is the same as a fetus at 8 months. That's why I hate a lot of pro-lifers ... many of them are so mindnumbingly inflexible with their strict religious value system. What I don't get is why aren't European biotechnology companies going ahead full steam with stem cell research??? |
|
|
| DrummeRaver86 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Because to many pro-lifers a fetus at something rediculous like day 20 conception is the same as a fetus at 8 months. That's why I hate a lot of pro-lifers ... many of them are so mindnumbingly inflexible with their strict religious value system. What I don't get is why aren't European biotechnology companies going ahead full steam with stem cell research??? |
Exactly. The Europeans are being hindered byt the ultra-religious groups. Remember, over there, everything has to be sanctioned by the government, and the government doesn't want this that American researches are dealing with (i.e. abortion clinc explosions, researcheers being assassinated). The best part is that these pro-lifers condone taking another person's life. Paradox in motion. |
|
|
| gibbo |
| abortion is a tough subject to debate coz its got all kinds of moral implications and also then goes into should someone have the right to do whatever they want with there own body, i think sometimes an abortion is the best thing but other times it isnt its difficult to say and will never be a cut and dried issue |
|
|
| DrummeRaver86 |
| quote: | Originally posted by gibbo
abortion is a tough subject to debate coz its got all kinds of moral implications and also then goes into should someone have the right to do whatever they want with there own body, i think sometimes an abortion is the best thing but other times it isnt its difficult to say and will never be a cut and dried issue |
ummm...yeah....thanks for the umm, info...
 |
|
|
| joeh152 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrummeRaver86
ummm...yeah....thanks for the umm, info...
Image removed cause its wank and already been used 412 times so far today on the TA boards |
Are you a ?????? :conf: :conf:
yes. |
|
|
| gibbo |
| what a sad stupid fool using a picture of jesus thats just juvenikle get a in life |
|
|
| DrummeRaver86 |
| quote: | Originally posted by joeh152
Are you a ?????? :conf: :conf:
yes. |
oh no....please don't call me a . you're laughable. go ahead call me whatever you'd like. if you think i actually care enough to go get mad, you need help.
and don't even think about saying that the fact that i'm replying here shows i'm mad. |
|
|
|
|
