Keyword: Abortion [Do the New Anti-Abortion and Heartbeat laws make women into State regulated Chattel?]

Keyword: Abortion

[*Disclaimer:* this gets long and philosophically complex. If you're just going to harp ad nauseum that abortion equates to murder, then don't bother responding.]


[*Disclaimer 2:* Serious responses only, please. That doesn't mean I don't want disagreement, but simply sharing twice-regurgitated anti-abortion rhetoric does not an educated opinion make.]



I'm wondering if certain anti-abortion bills trespass on anti-slavery laws.

If, for example, the legal claim is that the woman has NO autonomous right over her reproductive organs/choices, and the state -- by way of law and legislation -- forces her to be an incubator, effectively making her State-owned chattel, then does this not constitute a type of slavery?

I'd argue that it does. Owning another human being for forced labor, or owning any part of them, including their reproductive organs -- and by extension, their reproductive choices -- is a form of slavery.


Pro-life advocates may argue that abortion equates to murder even as they have NEVER adequately defined fetal personhood nor have they ever attempted to move beyond the anti-abortion rhetoric that doesn't seek to guilt people into thinking pro-choice/pro-abortion is the choice to murder babies (hint: it's NOT).

In my estimation, pro-life isn't a valid position because they've offered no valid argument. Their claim is merely that "life begins at conception."

Defining a starting point for a stage of biological development is fine. Attempting to define what fetal personhood would look like would be the next logical step. But they don't do this.

Instead, they move on to stripping the mother of her autonomous rights over her own body. That opens an ethical can of worms. Least of all because it's immoral and two wrongs do not make a right (by their own reasoning this would be obvious -- strangely it's not).

But "life at conception" isn't what they are attempting to define. The wording is actually a diversionary tactic because it sounds in-line with the scientific consensus which acknowledges biological stages and degrees of development of the fetus. The pro-life side, however, explicitly does not recognize such.

What they explicitly mean to say "personhood begins at conception" but, as we all know, this concept of 'fetal personhood' has nowhere been defined or even articulated to any degree of coherence.

Therefore, upon logical inspection, I argue that these new laws are not about defining fetal personhood or life but, in point of fact, enslaving women by legal means to become producers of children.

To me, this is just as bad as murder. So, I don't see how any pro-life advocate can square away this line of reasoning with any law that seeks to swap out one perceived evil for another equal or greater evil.

It seems that the emotional appeals and admonishments regarding "baby murder" and "killing infants" is just a smoke screen for a most sinister and draconian ploy to gain control and ownership of women's reproductive organs and place her child-rearing capacity under the control of the state.

Additionally, the new anti-abortion and heartbeat laws seem to want to act as a potential wedge to challenge Roe vs. Wade and other abortion legislation in an effort to maybe subvert it.

But without clearly defining their terminology first, all this does is lead to further ambiguity and confusion regarding any and all future legislation. This would, at best, make it impossible to later clarify their terms thereby causing endless litigation on every single case by case basis. It's a badly thought out strategy that relies more on gut emotion rather than clear, rational minded consideration.

Furthermore, it is my opinion that the heartbeat bills don't make any logical sense to anyone who understands that biological stages are real and that the heart develops prior to the brain and other organs so that the simple pump can supply blood and oxygen to the organism for cellular growth -- that it may mature to a fully grown fetus at a later point in the growth cycle.

It's an extremely early stage of development (est. 5 weeks) and the heartbeat comes along at around week 8 to help start to grow the brain which begins development at week 8 (it's nowhere near grown since we know gyrification or cortical folding doesn't occur until week 24 of development -- and this is why nearly all medical professionals say that 20 weeks is the limit for safe abortion practices -- because before this stage of development the human brain cannot perceive in the manner that is sufficient for claiming awareness, consciousness, or personhood).

This is why viability becomes an important issue at these early stages. Remember, week 20 is when the fetus is approximately halfway through its growth into a fully formed fetus. But you don't call a car that's halfway built a fully ready to drive off the lot vehicle.

The raw batter of pancake mix isn't a blueberry muffin before you add blueberries or bake it. So, why would such an early stage of a fetus be considered what it's clearly not?

The pro-life claim that a fetus is a fetus is a fetus ignores biological stages of development entirely. It's like arguing that eggs and milk is a cake is a cake is a cake. I'm afraid a few important steps are missing before such a claim can be made.

The reason they say this is because they want a blastocyst, zygote, fetus, baby, and child along with all the stages of development in-between to effectively mean the exact same thing.

But they are not the same thing. The science is clear on the matter of biological stages and the gestation period for fetal growth and development.

Calling a half grown fetus a full fetus with personhood even though its nervous system and brain have just started to develop seems premature. The definition doesn't describe the stage of development accurately nor is an adequate gauge to determine whether, as in the case of pro-life argumentation, such a kind of fetus deserves to be defined as something autonomous from the mother in terms of personhood, legal rights, or even identity.

If anybody was truly savvy on the philosophy of law, they might realize that identity minus an external reality, or even a limited external reality (e.g. a womb) would be hard to articulate what autonomy it could have or what autonomy we could recognize.

I've mentioned in the past that placing the identity and autonomy of the mother in direct opposition to the fetus is problematic at best because the law already recognizes there are limited forms of autonomy, for example, minors, felons, and legal aliens all have limited rights as compared to natural born adult citizens.

Minors have fewer rights than adults. And so to claim a fetus has rights that usurp an adult mother's creates a confused legal precedent where minor's rights are concerned. Either a new category of human rights needs to be created or we have to make laws that already fit in-line with the current legal understanding of the separation of minor and adult rights.

I believe that this needs to be cleared up before the fetus can be given rights that usurp the mother's will and autonomy.

These are just some of the issues of a few hundred that I've identified as weaknesses in the pro-life legislation that is currently being passed. All of the legislation, it seems, is being passed based on knee-jerk emotional reactions to hypothetical scenarios (not real ones) and an extremely poor understanding of women's health. Moreover, the moral reasoning behind the anti-abortion bills and legislation seems to be confused if not entirely lacking.

Despite these damming revelations which make much of the current pro-life legislation a barely laughable joke, the bills are still being passed into law.

This is truly frightening. Because we've skipped several necessary steps based on bad rhetoric and bad rhetoric alone to place women's reproductive rights under the control of the state, thereby placing ownership of her reproductive capabilities and organs under the state via legislation that denies her any choice in the matter.

If it sounds awfully a lot like ownership over a human being -- or more accurately over a part of them -- it's because it is. And that's not a legal precedent I think we should be setting in the year 2019.

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