Comments on: Speaking up for abortion

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:37:41 +0000

It is wrong to kill human beings since they have the inherent capacity for all of those things you are describing. The essence of all these abilities is there, even if they have not yet been expressed.
Some say that the conceptus is a blueprint for a person. However, a blueprint is a property thing with no essence, individual identity, inherent capacity or intrinsic purpose. The conceptus is an entity possesses all these tihngs. That is why it makes sense to say that the conceptus’ personality is there essentially as well as “when I was conceived.”
An acorn is actually a tiny oak tree (biological fact). The reason we value it less is due to extrinsic value.
Minerva and Calligenia are both temporarily comatose. Suppose it was discovered that while Minerva did express cortical brain activity at some point, Calligenia’s injury will delay the development of actual activity until nine months after birth.
The only way to account for the great wrongness of killing Calligenia is to accept the substance view, which asserts that the human being is of a nature whose parts work in concert to actualize the capacities of the being as a whole (hopes, dreams, etc.)
Of course, one could make the grossly counterintuitive statement that Calligenia has less right to life than Minerva. Though, I refuse to accept that conclusion.

By: Mikhela

Mikhela — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:50:09 +0000

Here via ThirdCat. Great post, thank you.

“A full human being, even quite a small one, has hopes and dreams, thoughts for the future and the past, it can conceive of itself as existing in relation to itself, in relation to other people.”

At a tangent, what about a human being with disabilities such that they don’t have the above capabilities? ie hopes, dreams, future/past awareness, relationship to others? This is a serious question. ie, why is it generally held to be morally okay to abort a fetus with severe disabilities but not to allow a baby born with severe disabilities to die?

By: Trouble

Trouble — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:20:55 +0000

Baldock was getting confused about abortion stats, live birth stats and pregnancy stats. He seems not to believe in miscarriage. I don’t know how it does his cause any good – the more women who’ve had abortions, the more likely it is to be a mainstream issue that people will get in behind.

Anyone also notice that Right to Life put out a press release a while back saying, more or less, that they’d rather see 30 women a year die of cervical cancer than have teenagers vaccinated and thinking they can have sex without any negative consequences.

By: Trouble

Trouble — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:16:13 +0000

NZ’s Taleban on the march

He’s not quite right – the C S & A Act was a defeat for women campaigning for abortion rights, with its mental health criteria. The liberal application of those criteria was all that made it palatable and survivable as a law once Muldoon’s government was kicked out in 84.

Both main political parties have socially conservative cores they don’t want to alienate. I think the cost of losing social liberals would be higher for either, though.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:14:18 +0000

I also heard Baldock say that 21% of all women have an abortion. This figure is just blatant woman-hating and completely absurd. I got so mad I just can’t even express how angry I was (I tried with my Facebook status but ran out of room).

Thanks for writing this Deborah (and for cross-posting)

By: James Francis

James Francis — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:57:30 +0000

Deborah, Chris Trotter writes about this in today’s Dom Post (sorry, I don’t know how to do links but I’m sure it’s online). He notes that the Right To Lifers and Family Firsts have caught the whiff of a massive right-wing victory in November and that “after nine long years, their hour is at hand”.

I think we should all be very scared. The level of political activism amongst young people (young women?) is, I think, pretty low. The things that our generation fought for – the abortion laws, homosexual law reform, equal rights et cie – they take for granted. They’ve never had to think about them or question them – they’re just part of life.

That’s the bit that worries me.

By: kate

kate — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:56:44 +0000

For anyone who is in Victoria, rather than NZ, our politicians will be voting soon. prochoice.org have more information on the options that are being presented to parliament and you can write letters to parliamentarians via their site. They also have abortion stories from women in real complicated situations that would be made more difficult by some of the suggested legal changes.

And hopefully, finally, Victorian women might be deemed capable of making our own moral and ethical decisions in our own individual circumstances.

By: bluemilk

bluemilk — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:35:45 +0000

Good reminder that we need to keep speaking up for abortion, and keep speaking up, and keep speaking up.

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:26:14 +0000

Alison, thanks (I think!) for reporting what Baldock said. Talk about being completely blind to the realities of life, both now, and back through the hundreds of years in which many women didn’t actually cope, at all. That would be all the coat-hanger stories, and the horrors of child poverty in places like Dickens’ London, and…. and… and…. What a bizarre thing to say. As for the weak-women meme – good grief! How not to win votes, huh?

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:22:38 +0000

I’ve been thinking about your comment all day, deepsigh, and trying to think back twenty years or so. I was born and bred in the Catholic church, and got all the anti-abortion indoctrination there was going, and it took me a long time to shake it off, and think for myself. I know that what helped me most to think for myself was running up against the harsh realities of life, not for me personally, but for a couple of my friends, who made difficult decisions to have abortions, in which I supported them, though perhaps not so well as I could have (that Catholic indoctrination again…). Looking back, they both did the right thing. Not that my approval (or not) matters at all, because the decision was theirs to make, not mine.