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An interesting finding in recent polling on social issues. I'll let this piece give the details:

Americans are now evenly split on same-sex marriage: 47 percent support marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and 47 percent oppose them. That stalemate won't last long—critics of gay unions are dying off. According to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute, only 31 percent of Americans over age 65 support gays getting hitched, compared to 62 percent of Americans under 30.

But strong millennial support for gay marriage has not translated into an uptick in acceptance of other sexual freedoms, like the right to an abortion. The Public Religion Research Institute notes that popular support for keeping abortion legal has dipped a percentage point since 1999, and young Americans are not swelling the ranks of abortion rights supporters. Today, while 57 percent of people under 30 see gay sex as "morally acceptable," only 46 percent of them would say the same thing about having an abortion.

The institute calls this a "decoupling of attitudes." Support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights have traditionally gone hand-in-hand, and that's changing. Though young people today are "more educated, more liberal, and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated" than their parents—all factors traditionally correlated with support of abortion rights—they are not actually more likely to support abortion.

The article goes on to give some reasons as to why this decoupling is occurring, but I believe the issue is much more simple than that - gay marriage, as it is, has been a reality for millennials (folks ages 19-29) for most of their politically/socially aware lives now, and they see quite clearly how the issue really doesn't matter - gay people getting married doesn't impact their straight marriages, or their lives at all, really. There's no harm involved. The difference with abortion is that the harm involved remains self-evident - at the end of the day, we know how many abortions occur, and such "decoupling," as it were, likely reflects that difference. I also speculate that many do not see the abortion issue as one of "rights," but rather one of life. That those who self-identify as pro-life remains competitive ideologically with those who self-identify as pro-choice for the first time in a while may be a sign of that.

Why do you think these issues are separating? Should they truly be falling under the same social umbrella? What am I missing here?

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I'm dubious on the scientific accuracy of the claim that a fetus is 'part of a woman's body'. They are connected biologically to be sure, but the way it makes it sound is as if its an appendix. Every part of a person's own body contains the same genetic blueprint.

"Or, to put it another way, whether fetuses are people is a question mark, but whether women are people whose lives are going to be irreversibly altered by being forced to bear children is NOT a question mark. Guess which side I side with.

I agree with the first part. Personhood is subjective, but material existence is not The consequences, as difficult and life-altering as they are for the woman cannot compare with the consequences of being denied existence (which is a separate and scientifically observable phenomenon different from personhood). One can mitigate the consequences for the woman because she's still alive and capable of being helped. One cannot mitigate the consequences for having one's existence denied. That defines the side of the line I've come down on.

If they're not separately viable, then they aren't separate persons under the law, that's the short version.

If we are to judge criteria upon which a subject may be considered to have rights on existing law, then one is placed in the unsavory position of saying by implication that the slaves in the American south were not deserving of rights because the law did not recognize them as having such.

...did you seriously just compare a non-sentient clump of cells to actual, real slaves in the South? Oh my god that is disgusting.

I'm saying that public opinion and legal status-quo is a poor foundation to form an argument around.

As I've said, the sentience argument as well as viability, survivability, and the level of development, as well as any other measure by which others have tried to argue the line of personhood exists, is not relevant from the pro-life side. It's existence. Both the woman, and the fetus exist as observable physical beings with separate genetic identities. That's it. Every other attempt to argue personhood rather than existence is as arbitrary as skin color.

If you doubt this, then how is it that there is some rather significant division even on the pro-choice side when it comes to deciding what should determine personhood and when rights should be granted? I know from personal experience that the line is drawn differently every time I engage in such discussions. Rights from that perspective seem to exist on a sliding scale, of sorts.

IMO, the significant division between "person" and "not person" is, um, you've gotta be born. Excuse me for being a little brusque here, but I simply can't get through the argument that women's rights should be trampled until they no longer exist over a parasitic organism that cannot survive if removed from the woman's body. It's not a person at that point. It isn't sentient, it lives as a parasite, etc... no, that's not a person. In my opinion and that of nearly every other pro-choicer I know (which is a lot, as I refuse to associate with anti-choicers), a fetus becomes a person when it is born. Until then, it doesn't get rights.

I can't say your experience matches my own. And I do occasionally enter into discussions with the 'other side' so to speak because it helps me strengthen my own thoughts on issues.

You're right, else we would not have had a Civil War in the first place and would have become the Domination of Draka.

This is so illogical of a statement that it's just as disgusting.

That's how Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and five USSC justices, the Copperheads, and the 800,000 men and women who fought in Confederate Grey and served in the civil government, what passed for it, of the Confederacy and died to the tune of 260,000 thought of that question.

And that's an example of why I cannot abide the an appeal that elevates the status-quo to its own basis for justification.

Which is great and all but the number of Northerners, white and black, and Southerners white and black who died that "though he may be poor not a man shall be a slave" overrode these people and Lincoln won decisive re-election on this basis. While the Copperheads' ties to the Confederacy temporarily discredited them and the postwar consensus saw even the KKK fully aware that slavery was not simply nearly dead but truly and most sincerely dead.

So, basically... you believe a fetus has more rights than the woman. That's what you're saying. The fetus has additional rights to be completely dependent upon and risk the very life of the woman in order to subsist, therefore making its rights actually more important than the rights of the woman and negating all of her human rights. You're saying women who are pregnant have no rights of their own.

Lovely.

No, that' what you're saying I'm saying.

No, by saying women shouldn't have the right to abortion because fetuses should have rights, you are saying that those rights should supersede the human rights of the woman. By saying women shouldn't have the right of basic bodily autonomy, you are saying the fetus should have greater rights than the pregnant woman. Period. Nice try at dodging though.

Which right is more fundamental, the right to bodily autonomy, or the right to bodily integrity, when the two conflict?

The fetus has the right to "bodily integrity." I'm not talking about tearing it into tiny pieces or something. It totally has the right to live -- if it can, outside of the woman's body. But it does not have the right to take over a woman's body for nine months and risk killing her, regardless of whether you consider a fetus a "person" or not. As I said above, it would be tantamount to making it a law that you had to die and donate your heart to your sibling if they had a heart condition that necessitated a transplant, or that you had to give up your kidney. Fuck, at that point we might as well go the route of Never Let Me Go -- raise people solely for the purpose of harvesting their organs to save other people! After all, if a woman should be stripped of her rights to force her to provide for another being that is literally leeching all of her nutrients and living solely on her power and making irreparable changes to her body and might kill her, then why not just do that to loads of people, right?

Seriously, it's all bullshit. Women don't lose their rights when they get pregnant, no matter how much you want them to.

Edited 2011-09-01 23:45 (UTC)

Unless you live in a third world country where pregnancy might seriously be considered a death warrant, there is little need for this kind of hyperbole.

Yes, sometimes the occasion arises even in first world countries where a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, and if we were discussing that and that alone then you would have a point. But the vast majority of abortions are not these cases. Pregnancy in a first world country is

The comparison to Never Let Me Go differs significantly in that the dependency in the film is orchestrated, an imposition of man, not of biological nature, which is a prima facie violation which does not exist in the case of naturally arising pregnancy. The existence of the dependency is not one of a malicious man-made artifice, and the justification for maintaining a dependency that is naturally arising cannot be transferred (with intellectual honesty on the part of anyone attempting to do so) to one that is. There is no slippery slope here.

Oh yes (http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/usa-urged-confront-shocking-maternal-mortality-rate-2010-03-12), there is no danger (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/80743.php) of maternal mortality (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/12/amnesty-us-maternal-mortality-rates) or serious complications due to pregnancy (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-12/health/maternal.mortality_1_maternal-deaths-deaths-and-complications-pregnancy?_s=PM:HEALTH) in developed nations (http://www.medpagetoday.com/OBGYN/Pregnancy/19493) such as the United States (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/22/science/la-sci-maternal-deaths-20100523)!

P.S. A fetus still doesn't deserve more rights than the woman whose body it is hijacking. No matter what biology was involved in its creation. Saying a fetus's right to continue to leech nutrients and space and irreparably damage and change a woman's body trumps her right to, you know, not support that fetus is pure misogyny. Well, disgusting misogyny, actually.

Edited 2011-09-02 00:27 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether a vast majority of the abortions are for medical reasons or not, it's the same procedure, for the same reason. The only difference is whether people get to judge other's moral actions or not.

As for whether pregnancy is a life threatening condition I would urge you not to go down that argumentative road considering there are women in this very community for who this is a reality. Please do not be so dismissive of their situations.

I"m not diminishing it, I'm accentuating something that's not often pointed out, which is how rare those situations are and how safe we've been able to make pregnancy as a whole.

There are ways to deal with those situations that could satisfy pro-lifers and pro-choicers but that requires everyone lower their blood pressure. Sadly, I don't see that happening very soon.

That's the thing. it's not that rare. It happens far more often than people think, and even if not every woman's pregnancy is life threatening, it still can cause major health problems for us. For every woman. And honestly, I don't see a solution that satisfies both sides regardless of whether we are able to discuss it calmly or not. It comes down to whose rights are more important, the fetus or the woman. Until a fetus can survive outside of the woman's body, there is no compromise on the issue.

I was looking at the statistics here (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_mat_mor-health-maternal-mortality) as a point of reference.

For me, the answer has always been "neither" and "both", when it comes to the question of 'whose rights are more important?' I can't see anything but two patients in every pregnancy, from a biological standpoint, from a medical standpoint, and from the standpoint of simple human existence. I've heard every counter argument and I cannot argue that they don't come from a place of deep conviction, but it always comes down to these two elements: We exist or we do not. We are alive or we are not.

I refuse to, by default and regardless of circumstance, make one more important than the other, (or to accept the idea that by taking this stance means I'm taking the 'side' of fetus over the woman), any more than a doctor would make one kind of patient by default more important than another in going about the task of triage.

Well, given the number of pregnancies in the US every year those numbers are still worthwhile. Not to mention as I said it's not even death we need to only worry about, there are many serious side effects to pregnancy.

The unfortunate thing is you are by default taking a stance. Until a fetus can survive outside the host body, you are infringing upon the woman's rights to use her own body as she sees fit. And since we do not know when existence begins is it really fair for you, or for anyone to ask that of us? Should we not err on the side that we know has consciousness and rights? Especially considering the vast majority of pregnancies take place when the fetus in question is truly nothing more than a clump of cells.

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jerseycajun.livejournal.com - 2011-09-02 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

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prog-expat.livejournal.com - 2011-09-02 03:25 (UTC) - Expand

See here. (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1144626.html?thread=91085874#t91085874) If a fetus is not a person, it does not have a guaranteed right to exist. Otherwise, anyone taking anti-viral medication would be guilty of committing genocide. And no, one cannot entirely mitigate the consequences on the woman's life, and realistically, in the vast majority of cases, there won't even be any token gestures to do so, because the vast majority of consequences WILL disproportionately affect the woman rather than the man, all in the name of a collection of cells whose personhood is, at best, a question mark.

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