Anonymous #1 12w

If you think theres no correlation between abortion bans and mother deaths during childbirth, you do not live in reality

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Anonymous OP 12w

Insisting that its the leading cause is the definition of not living in reality

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Anonymous #1 12w

If you believe I was insisting it was the leading cause of mother mortality rates during childbirth, you would STILL NOT BE LIVING IN REALITY Because I infact never insisted that

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Anonymous OP 12w

This is literally the point of your post

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Anonymous #1 12w

Please elucidate me oh wise one, where i said its the “leading cause”.

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Anonymous OP 12w

Because to me, the LEADING CAUSE is general discrimination against women in healthcare, where we do not take their needs as seriously (less likely to give painkillers, less likely to believe patients, more likely to believe it is pregnancy or hormonal related)

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Anonymous OP 12w

Well yeah that’s not your opinion that’s just the reality

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Anonymous #1 12w

And I see abortion bans as a subsection of that reality, in which a woman’s life is valued less than her ability to produce children

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Anonymous OP 12w

Assuming because you do not see fetuses as a living human being

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Anonymous #1 12w

Theyre living human beings scientifically, but hold less weight than the mothers who carry them in my eyes.

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Anonymous #1 12w

they’re a fetus. until a certain developmental stage, they require the pregnant person’s body and blood to survive. most human beings do not need to be hooked up to another human being to live off of them for survival, especially without the enthusiastic and unwavering consent from that other person.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Thats because that is a natural process in which the fetus requires those nutrients to be sustainable and develop. It’s not forcing you either, because it has no control over the situation

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Anonymous OP 12w

You’re insane. But at least you admitted that you’d rather let one human being die over the other no matter what.

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Anonymous #4 12w

You’re suggesting that I also would not have control over the situation either as a pregnant person… Also, a natural process colloquially referred to as a miscarriage is medically termed “spontaneous abortion” too. If I am unable to revoke consent at any time, then I never truly had the ability to consent in the first place bc I don’t have a choice in the matter. The fetus isn’t forcing anything, people like YOU would force me to keep it.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Actually, you have the ability to make the process end and abort. You have the ability to make decisions about the future and autonomy of what is inside you, it does not. In this scenario, you are both in a circumstance of a process, but only one of you has the ability to opt out, always at the expense of the other. There is a very clear power dynamic. You would be forcing the fetus to die, where otherwise policy might counter your force to give it an opportunity to continue.

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Anonymous #4 12w

Give “it” an opportunity against MY will, against MY needs, against MY health concerns, and in violation of MY rights to my body. My job requires me to do things that pregnant people cannot do (i.e. using radioactive isotopes or DMSO), so you’d also be preventing me from work and from school. You’d be forcing thousands of dollars worth medical bills onto me. You’re forcing me to give birth in a county that does NOT have a L&D unit nor adequate pediatric care facilities…

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Anonymous #3 12w

with ALL OF THAT LACK OF SUPPORT MEDICALLY AND SOCIALLY, it doesn’t even seem like this fetus would choose to make me suffer just so we can both exist in suffering together… do you know how many parents wanted to have their kids and still HATE them? can you imagine how a parent would feel toward an UNWANTED child? let alone the issues of one parent wanting a kid and the other not wanting a kid… and the many murders of women that historically arise from it (also see Blaise Taylor case!)

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Anonymous #3 12w

Give “you” an opportunity against IT’s needs, against IT’s health, and against IT’s human sanctity. What if we had free healthcare? What bills? You’re talking about human rights and then somehow its affordability should determine its value and its ability to live. One is a moral issue, the other is a systemic one. I should hope that whether or not it is affordable to you does not mean it’s less of a human, and I should hope that medical bills become less expensive.

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Anonymous #4 12w

I should hope that healthcare develops better protocol and quality as well

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Anonymous #3 12w

Postpartum depression is real. You know what else is real? Da baby. There have been situations like that throughout history and throughout families. Why is that a deterrent now?

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Anonymous #4 12w

IT doesn’t exist!! IT is a hypothetical person!! I am a REAL person with ACTUAL needs and dreams and wants and aspirations and opinions and the ability make decisions. A fetus has none of that is not even close to being sentient until ~26 weeks, at which point an abortion is typically just induction of labor and birth. You assume all abortions terminating a pregnancy are the same. You are NOT educated enough on this MEDICAL concept to make moral judgments on it. That is ultracrepidarian.

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Anonymous #3 12w

It's a pretty flimsy argument that life starts at sentience or consciousness. That would imply life also ends when consciousness ends, and we have hard evidence against that.

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Anonymous #4 12w

“what if we had free healthcare” that would be great but that doesn’t change the fact that I would have to travel over an hour to a totally different county in my state to access a Labor & Delivery unit at a hospital bc the one closest to me was forced to close! My state also has little to no pediatric care for infants or children, so what am I supposed to do after birth? There’s so much nuance that you’re totally missing in addition to all the unfavorable gory details you’re omitting too.

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Anonymous #2 12w

personally, i don’t really think it’s immoral to pull the plug on a braindead person (truly no brain activity, not a medically-induced coma). you’re not really taking anything from them and they can’t make that decision themselves. plus, those people usually become organ donors so if anything it’s a bittersweet outcome.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Are you an organ donor?

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Anonymous #3 12w

Then explain what’s being missed. You seemed to argue with rights and affordability, I’m not sure what you’re willing to give to the fetus.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Also brain death is not the same thing as a lack of sentience

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Anonymous #4 12w

i’m confused what you mean. do I have to be willing to give the fetus something if I don’t consent to it being in my body? for any reason. personally, my reasons are affordability, lack of medical care, my own disabilities & health concerns, lack of familial support (out-of-state), and being unable to dedicate the time to parenting. I would LOVE to be a mother someday on my own terms. My partner is also lovely. It’s a case-by-case decision for everyone, and it’s rarely a rash decision either.

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Anonymous #2 12w

… uh, the definition of sentience is “the ability to perceive or feel things”… which are sensory processes conducted by the brain. if there is no brain activity whatsoever in response to stimuli, there is no perception or feeling of things, therefore there is no sentience.

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Anonymous #3 12w

I mean, you allot for yourself the bodily autonomy argument, your freedoms of choice and liberty. If we accept that you and the fetus are of the same moral value/human moral consideration, which I don’t know that you do, what rights that you have apportioned for yourself are you willing also to grant to the fetus, on the basis of your moral view of its life?

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Anonymous #3 12w

Sure a lack of brain activity will always mean a lack of perception, but you can lack perception without lacking brain activity. By this same logic I could say that eye movement is the determinator of life.

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Anonymous #2 12w

Life ending at the cessation of consciousness is exactly how things work, unplugging life-support for example

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Anonymous #1 12w

That still doesn't explain how, if consciousness and life are one and the same, you can lack consciousness without lacking life.

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Anonymous #1 12w

Or it would imply that on some level we are always conscious until we die, which is simply not aligned with our current understanding of consciousness.

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Anonymous #2 12w

When one gains the capacity/loses the capacity to deploy a conscious experience is probably one of the deeper philosophical questions

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Anonymous #2 12w

Conscious and sentient are not interchangeable terms. Someone can be knocked unconscious or just faint and be conscious again soon after. Sentience is the ability to perceive, which in this case isn’t the subjective act of perception (e.g. i think it’s purple, you think it’s lavender) but is the medical neurological determinant of brain activity as a response to stimuli. This applies to all vertebrates with a cerebral brain.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Still, plenty of people have lacked a brain response to stimuli at a point and survived. On top of this, our understanding of sentience is incomplete which would make it a poor indicator for life.

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Anonymous #4 12w

I truly don’t fully understand what you’re asking of me here, and it’s probably hinged on the fact that I don’t find there to be anything immoral about someone terminating a pregnancy that they cannot carry to term for MANY reasons, even if they desperately want to be a parent. I don’t believe a fetus should be considered to have equal or greater moral consideration than me, the person carrying the fetus. Am I to be rendered just a container for the fetus bc it has more rights than I do?

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Anonymous #2 12w

Like I said before, this is a case-by-case basis. It’s not like we pull the plug on every brain dead person and I’m not arguing that my personal morality be forced upon others, unlike people who find abortion to be morally wrong. They are trying to force everyone to have the same morality as them which is farcical.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Okay. I think this where we disagree. I find it immoral in most cases because I view human life equally regardless of position, development, or stage in life (death is post-life). As such, it becomes a moral dilemma in the circumstance where one life living will result in the other dying, and I think that’s a good dilemma to have. I believe that your feelings about “being a container” come from how little you view the fetus, and therefore what that makes you when it is treated as equal to you.

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Anonymous #2 12w

also… no it’s not, we know brain activity and response to stimuli begins at ~26weeks gestation so it’s not really a poor indicator. Ideally we shouldn’t perform D&C abortions after that period but I’m not going to say that needs to be a legal obligation bc the patient and their trusted medical professionals can make the proper decisions in each case.

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Anonymous #4 12w

Say I’m pregnant, but it’s my fifth pregnancy and i’m at high risk of preeclampsia and other fatal complications. I have four other children at home. I am a therapist for veterans. I am the breadwinner of the home. I am the caretaker of my elderly parents. I am a role model within the community for all. Is my value in this community less than that of the fetus inside me? Does the community value my fetus as equal to me and my services? Would my four children, clients, or parents value ME more?

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Anonymous #3 12w

Here’s the interesting thing. The moral consideration of a human is not contingent on whether or not it is a good human or a bad human. You can be all those things, but that doesn’t make you less human and it certainly doesn’t make the fetus more of a human being with you. What you have simply means that you are well-loved, and you will be more valued by so many more people than that fetus. But in the baseline, impartial and unchanging moral foundation, you are human, and therefore valuable.

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Anonymous #4 12w

Try to imagine the inverse. A mother is accused of mass murder, rape, crimes against humanity. She has the same problem as you, and she is well-hated. Does her fetus have more rights to her, that she should absolutely perish, is the fetus of equal moral foundational value to her, or is the fetus less than her, having committed no crime but existing and requiring the nutrients of the womb of a horrible person?

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Anonymous #4 12w

That’s a somewhat hollow argument bc there is no evidence of capital punishment against pregnant inmates, nor is this a common occurrence in society. My example is much more common than you can imagine. My cousin is one of those women whose partner told her he wouldn’t support her during pregnancy nor in parenthood, as the sole caregiver of her disabled brother and elderly father AND full-time nursing student. She chose to end the pregnancy, no matter how much it pained her to do so…

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Anonymous #3 12w

Whether or not the scenario is real does not discredit the reasoning you were giving. I was just showing what that might look like under the same line of thought. Perhaps I misspoke, really what I gave you was a contrapositive example. I don’t think there’s a necessity in that to be a real situation that has happened, but to ask the question of how much one is willing to extend that reasoning before it begins to break down.

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Anonymous #4 12w

It asks, are you willing to say that a mother, in my scenario, should be forced through a birth that is considered to be fatal for her when she is morally bankrupt, as a contrapositive to when you asked, am I willing to force the fetus to be terminated when the mother is of a high moral value to everyone, when that force will be fatal to the fetus.

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Anonymous #3 12w

I still don't see any valid equivocation between a patient who is brain dead and a living fetus. We can see when brain activity starts, sure, but there are people who don't even correctly develop the brain and still go on to live, there are people who lose brain activity and regain it, etc. It can't be a valid determinator if we can find an exception, thats not how determination works.

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Anonymous #2 12w

You’re just agreeing with me that it is a subjective case-by-case basis on when these procedures occur and how they occur. It should be up to medical personnel and the patient themselves or their next of kin to make decisions about reproductive health. Adriana Smith and her family were NOT granted that dignity of choice because the legislation barred them from that choice. Adriana’s mother said so herself.

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Anonymous #4 12w

Nobody should be forced to endure a birth OR a pregnancy when they do not want it or consent to it. The ‘morally bankrupt’ mother enduring a potentially fatal birth deserves the choice of an abortion if she prefers. The ‘highly respected’ mother of four already deserves the choice of an abortion if she prefers to be fully present for her four children than in a high-risk pregnancy. Adriana Smith did not get that choice, and died both by medical neglect AND by the legislation in her state.

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Anonymous #3 12w

Do you know what that particular policy is/ the part that you believe contributed to her death? Also, I never said there were no extreme cases. Certainly if it’s absolutely certain you would die from birth, action would be considered and deliberated by you, your family, and medical staff.

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Anonymous #4 12w

But that care for the mother isn’t happening in many states, such as Georgia and Texas where doctors’ licenses are threatened and even subjected to criminal charges by bounty hunters for those seeking or aiding in abortion care... Women have testified both in Congressional session and on the steps of the Capitol to speak of their experiences being told they had to seek medical care out-of-state in order to survive their pregnancy. It’s maddening!

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Anonymous #4 12w

“Certainly if its absolutely certain you would die from birth” bro thinks life’s some game with percentage chances of winning or losing Calculating chances of mortality is built upon data. Data that is mother’s dying, in this scenario. A calculated percentage built upon the deaths of many that could have been prevented throguh abortion- that could also go from 5% to 99% if any complication occurs

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