Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dcnovice
If abortion is murder and we execute murderers, should we execute women who abort?
If and only if we entertain the premise that abortion is murder, then we should necessarily execute doctors for performing it, along with the women that order it, and anyone involved in paying for it, while charging people with being accessories as is appropriate, save for the circumstance where self defense is invoked (an exception sometimes forgotten by prolifers).
The premise itself, however, is one I don't agree with.
In my view, no man or woman has any bodily obligation or obligation of labor that hasn't been voluntarily undertaken, and the State should have no part in enforcing an obligation, save as recorded in contract or proclaimed before several disinterested witnesses. This includes the supposed obligation to sustain a parasite that may one day become a decent person. As such, it may be removed on any grounds by anyone willing to perform that service, but the providers of that service can impose what conditions they will, as with any service provided, and there is no inherent claim to the tissue, meaning that viable fetuses can certainly be kept alive and raised, assuming someone is willing to do so (or someone is willing to pay for that service).
I tend to think that a State should seek to provide certain services (though I prefer for this to be done in a tiered model, on an opt-in basis, if possible), and that one of these services should be termination of pregnancies that are dangerous, along with those that are likely to constitute an unreasonable burden on the woman or on society (e.g. rape babies, babies with serious genetic defects, etc.), to those women that wish it. Obviously, a State can buy such services, and the hospitals in question may provide the service under other conditions as well, but I do not think there are other circumstances where a State should pay for it.
Necessarily, a well run State also provides ready access to contraceptives (in particular condoms, which confer additional benefits in public health) and educates in their use as part of its sex education curriculum for its public schools, as well as covering other aspects of family planning in its life skills curriculum under the heading of health and finance. These are means of reducing the incidence of abortions (for those who care about that), but more importantly, are means to ensure an overall healthier and more prosperous society for everyone, as demonstrated by comparing countries that have such programs with those that do not, as well as by comparing before and after introducing such programs in countries that have. Well run States barely mention abstinence in sex education, save to assure students that it's perfectly acceptable to be abstinent if they want to be.
Without a liberal (in the international sense of the word, not the American sense of the word) premise, western moralities cannot bear with integrity the legality of abortion without necessity, though it is still an open question whether or not one should consider such to be murder if the liberal premise is absent. If present, the liberal premise provides for abortion, and indeed provides for it in greater measure than is the case in current laws in most western countries, though the funding restrictions would be apt to cause a similar pattern to what is seen today.
The figures for the USA are comparable to those for other countries in the Western hemisphere.
The teen pregnancy figures are appallingly high, though.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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If abortion is murder . . . - 
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