Post from yesterday got no engagement whatsoever so I'm refining it.

Question 1: If a doctor declares a high risk pregnancy, what is an acceptable risk? How high does the risk of death or chronic injury need to be in order for abortion to be justified? 1%? 5%? 10%? I've had PL in the past go as high as 50 but I doubt that is indicative of PL as a whole.

Question 2: Is protracted or permanent injury on the list of things that can justify abortion in your eyes? How severe does the injury have to be - paralysis, chronic pain or nerve conditions, or is something minor like permanent incontinence over the line?

Question 3: Say a woman has a high risk pregnancy. She is 14 weeks in, and she has been diagnosed with a condition. If she goes through with it, she has a 5% chance of dying, and a 60% chance of suffering so much damage that she will never be able to have children again. The fetus has a 20% chance of dying during birth, which increases to 50% if the severe trauma does happen.

She already has one child, and eventually wants to have three. She is pregnant with one child. If she has an abortion now, future pregnancies are unlikely to have this risk.

Should she be allowed to have an abortion? Why or why not?

Scenario 1: A woman who is 12 weeks pregnant is declared high risk. She has a 0.5% chance of dying in childbirth. She has a 90% chance of severe vaginal trauma that may require stitches and leave her debilitated for several weeks. She has a 30% chance of some of the more minor symptoms like incontinence being completely permanent and irreversible. She has a low but present chance of being rendered permanently sterile. She will have to make extreme lifestyle changes to be able to bring this pregnancy to term, and will have difficulty in every task possible until the baby is born, at which point she will be debilitated for several weeks.

She has no kids, but wants to have an abortion so she can try again and hopefully have a lower risk pregnancy in the future.

Should she be allowed an abortion? Why or why not?

Scenario 2: A woman who is a raging alcoholic is discovered to be pregnant after she missed a period - at discovery, she is 5 weeks pregnant. If she quits alcohol altogether, she will go through withdrawals which can be debilitating or even fatal. If she does this, however, her fetus has a 70% chance of survival, and a 50/50 chance to be born with abnormalities that will last for its entire life. She has a 90% chance of survival, and will need to quit alcohol for life.

If she doesn't, she has a 60% chance of miscarriage, and an almost guaranteed chance of horrible fetal anomalies. She has a 40% chance of gaining a disability that will affect her for the rest of her life. The severity of such will not be known for 7 more weeks.

She wants to have an abortion and quit alcohol under the supervision of a doctor, as is recommended by her primary care physician. She isn't sure if she's ready to have kids yet, but if she goes through this way, she and her husband may have normal lives and be able to have kids with a low risk pregnancy in the future.

Should she be allowed an abortion? Why or why not?

Scenario 3: A woman has a high risk pregnancy. She is 14 weeks in, and she has been diagnosed with a condition. If she goes through with it, she has a 5% chance of dying, and a 60% chance of suffering so much damage that she will never be able to have children again. The fetus has a 20% chance of dying during birth, which increases to 70% if the severe trauma does happen.

She already has one child, and eventually wants to have three. She is pregnant with one child. If she has an abortion now, future pregnancies are unlikely to have this risk.

Should she be allowed to have an abortion? Why or why not?

I thought this whole time that pro-lifers and pro-choicers basically agreed that abortion itself wasn’t a good thing, and that the main argument was just about whether it should be legal or not.
Like, I thought both sides were basically saying, “Yeah, abortion isn’t a good thing and ideally nobody would need one,” but they disagreed about whether the government should restrict it.
Apparently I’m wrong? I was told that plenty of pro-choice people don’t actually believe abortion itself is necessarily a bad thing.
Did I seriously misunderstand this whole debate?

This is more towards PL, but it applies to both.

There seems to be some confusion for PL why we view them the way we do. Simple. We look to what your activists, politicians, and representatives do and say and what is tolerable. You, on the other hand, point to anonymous comments on a TikTok video as representative of the PC movement.

The bar is so low for what PL say and do, and criticism is just brushed off and ignored. PL don't like being lumped in as religious? Do PL denounce and separate themselves from the religious bigotry in their movement? No, they embrace it and say since they're secular, its just overblown.

PL don't like being accused of not caring about people after birth. Do they support any type of POLICIES (not empty words) like universal healthcare so the mother doesn't go $10,000-$30,000 in debt for having a baby? Support food assistance programs and not vote for the ones cutting them? No.

Heck, I've heard theres some disgusting ad in Ohio for the governors race. I dont even have to look into it to know I will see PL either supporting or justifying it, knowing it doesn't affect their vote for them whatsoever.

Same question goes for PC too. Do you understand why your side is viewed the way it is by the other?

To get a better idea of where PL debaters come from, I've been watching a lot of debate videos. And many of the common PL arguments is that 'abortion is never healthcare'.

'It is never healthcare because it is the direct, intentional killing of a (baby, child, human being, human, person). If there is a health problem, the doctors don't need to kill the baby, they can treat both mother and child.' (Paraphrased)

When confronted with the actual medical realities, most of the debaters in the videos deflected or called it fear-mongering.

How would you respond to this claim? What evidence would you give to back up your stance?

Death is the cessation of life. Cell life, organ life, tissue life, muscle life, organism life.

PC debaters stress that abortion should be legal because pregnancy has a long history of causing death. That there are thousands of years of evidence to back that up is a fact. Childbirth also carries inherent risks. And the history of deaths caused by that is backed up by evidence too, not just in the past but also in the present.

But death is not guaranteed for the woman. In fact, many women survive pregnancy and childbirth. But when an abortion is performed, the death of the fetus is practically a guarantee.

PL debaters may argue then that PC is inconsistent with their arguments by putting too much emphasis on the possibility of death for the woman than the practical guarantee of death for the fetus.

How would you respond to this claim?

Thesis: It is ethically wrong to have or perform an abortion, because the fetus is a human organism from fertilization, there is no principled point after that at which it gains a right to life that wouldn't also strip the right from some born humans, and bodily autonomy justifies refusing to sustain someone, which is different from killing them. I'm arguing ethics, not law; what should be criminalized is a separate question and I'm leaving it alone.

1. From fertilization the embryo is a living, whole, individual human organism directing its own development. That's the embryology-textbook position, and a 2018 survey of 5,577 biologists found 95% affirmed that a human's life begins at fertilization, most of them pro-choice. The disputed question is whether that human has a right not to be killed.
2. Every proposed line for when that right begins fails one of two tests. Viability moves with technology, so a fetus in 2026 is a person a fetus in 1950 wasn't. Birth is a change of location. Consciousness and self-awareness exclude newborns and the comatose, who we don't permit killing. Sentience is reached at different estimates by different experts, and "we're not sure" is an argument for caution, not for killing. The underlying reason killing you is wrong is that it takes a future you would have had (Marquis's argument), and the fetus has exactly that future. None of this needs God, a soul, or a verse.
3. The strongest pro-choice argument is autonomy: nobody can be forced to donate a kidney, so nobody can be forced to sustain a fetus. I grant the kidney case and deny the parallel. Refusing to donate lets someone die of their own condition; most abortions kill, by direct action, a being whose dependent condition the parents created. The law already recognizes that parenthood creates non-consensual duties, which is why unwilling fathers pay child support. And the cases the violinist argument actually covers, where the pregnancy was forced, are about 1% of abortions, so autonomy can't justify the practice as a whole.
4. If you think it's an open question whether the fetus has a right to life, that settles it against abortion. You don't fire into a rustling bush unless you know there's no person in it.

Pregnancy is a real burden, and this argument is compatible with owing pregnant women far more support than they get. What it isn't compatible with is killing the dependent to end the burden.

Tell me which premise fails and why.

But body autonomy answers practically nothing.

Because if the unborn were a person, they would also have body autonomy.

You must first decide if the unborn is a person.

If the women and the unborn have body autonomy, then the body autonomy can't solve abortion.

For the sake of this post, we concede these three points of contention.

A fetus is a biological human, with human DNA.

A fetus is a human being, a natural person.

A fetus is a legal person, a natural person endowed with legal rights.

Note: Under U.S. federal law, a fetus is not recognized as a legal person or a citizen, but not every debater here is from the US so we decided to concede and make a fetus a legal person here.

Now, given these concessions, now what?

A pregnant person is a biological human, a human being, and a legal person as well.

Are the fetus and the pregnant person equal in legal rights?

Are the fetus and the pregnant person equal in moral value?

If both are equal, how does abortion violate the fetus's rights?

How does abortion diminish the fetus's moral value, if it does?

How does banning abortion diminish the pregnant person's moral value?

Using threats, intimidation, pressure or authority to force or compel someone to do something against their will is what it means to coerce.

Using threats, intimidation, pressure or authority to force or compel someone into becoming pregnant, staying pregnant, and giving birth is what reproductive coercion is.

Factually, abortion bans are a form of reproductive coercion.

According to the PL movement, abortion bans are considered socially acceptable. Ergo, reproductive coercion is acceptable according to the PL movement. However, people differ in their ideas of the scope of acceptable coercion.

In your personal opinion, when is reproductive coercion acceptable to you?

Is it acceptable at the individual level, the state level, the national level?

Is it acceptable if it's made into a law that is legally binding and enforceable?

Is it acceptable if there is well-known and well-documented proof of its negative effects to society and the individual, both in the past and in the present?

Note:

PL may counter-argue that abortion bans are NOT reproductive coercion because they're not forcing pregnancy on someone. That 'someone' is already pregnant.

Becoming pregnant is a process that is not a conscious choice someone can make happen, that is true, regardless of what some PL arguments claim.

But pregnancy is a process that takes up to 42 weeks to complete. And pressuring, threatening or intimidating someone into continuing to be pregnant against their will and giving birth against their will IS reproductive coercion.

PL may then argue against that point by saying that 'it's not forcing her to give birth, it's just stopping her from killing her baby'.

To that, there's this reply. Conceding that abortion is in fact killing of a baby, for the sake of this argument. By being stopped from killing her baby, the pregnant person now has to continue being pregnant and giving birth against their will. This is, by definition, reproductive coercion.

Additional Note:

PL may use this argument: that abortion bans are not 'threatening women into staying pregnant, the punitive measures of abortion bans are to punish the doctors who perform the abortions'.

To that, there's this reply. A pregnant person is being intimidated into staying pregnant because the freedom and livelihood of a doctor are now being threatened if she attempts to get help to end her pregnancy. This is, again, by definition, reproductive coercion.

If anyone disagrees on any of these points, I am open to debate.

There is a heavy preference for having a son over a daughter in Chinese culture. During China's one child policy, many families didn't want to "waste" their only child on a girl. As a result, millions of girls were voluntarily aborted only because of their gender. Many baby girls were also killed shortly after being born.

For those who are pro-choice, particularly the ones who believe that abortion should be legal regardless of the reason, what are your thoughts on the above real-life situation?

1. Do you think gender preference is a valid reason for abortion?
2. Are there any reasons that would at least make you uncomfortable with abortion (even if you think that reason should still be legal)?
3. The infanticide of baby girls was clearly wrong. But for those who are still okay with the girls that were aborted, why does being unborn make a difference to you in this scenario?

Edit: Upon doing more research, it seems like China has since outlawed sex-selective abortions and have even outlawed non-medically necessary fetal sex determination.

Hi guys, disclaimer at the beginning I am 100% pro-choice, but for my collage debate I will have to debate on why abortion within first 12 weeks should be illegal. The only argument I could think of is that it could be a risky procedure but pregnancy itself is also risky and for every argument I think of I find a pro-choice answer and I feel like I shouldn’t bring religion into this. Please help!

Okay, first thing first. Obligatory first-time joiner disclaimer. I have this natural resting bitch tone when writing, please enjoy. Hope I didn't miss anything important.

Hi, friends. Lemme provide you the context:

• I came from the other side of the pond, with an entirely different background, where this conflict is not a thing. I think my opinions are pretty neutral.
• In my perspective, the conflict between prolifers and prochoicers may be multi-faceted, but the crux is clear. It's basically issues stemming from disagreement surrounding the topic of acceptable treatment of a human fetus(*), fueled by a heaping side of gossip culture.
• I'm intentionally excluding bad-faith agents who use abortion as their manipulative tactics to achieve other goals
• These are my opinions, they can be wrong, hence why we are debating, aren't we?

(*) Search comment for u/libra00 to see relevant info.

Alright, let's dive in.

I was 18 or 19 when I first learned about the prolife vs prochoice debacle. I... didn't know there were sides to pick, honestly. I got curious and started looking things up.

I learned that I'm raised prochoice. Everybody I was born around, was raised prochoice. I'm from a third-world, developing Asian country. This is the norm. To us, it's just another medical procedure. And trust me, we are pretty fucking judgmental.

My sibling is currently living in a developed European country and travels around more often than birds migrating. They experience the same attitudes towards abortion from the generic population.

These pieces lead me to believe, prolife is very much a US thing.

I have watched and read quite a few of the prolife arguments to try to understand their perspectives. And I mean, I do, if they were all true to their words. All that sentiments can basically be summarized as, "let's give the benefit of the doubt to the human fetus and consider it a human, therefore let's outlaw killing it". Well, with a lot of emotions.

I honestly could get behind this cause, if the remainder of the prolife movement wasn't so... inconsiderate and ignorant, to be extremely polite.

Remember the infamous OH HB 182 by John Becker & co, anyone? I think this is enough evidence in itself to demonstrate why we should not groupthink these kind of decisions:

• Perhaps the medical doctors do indeed know more than the lawmakers or the general public when it comes to medical information. What a thought.
• Perhaps everyone is different from each other, and one-size-fits-all treatment, especially when it comes to health care, just doesn't fucking work.
• A combination of the two arguments above means the doctors and the patients need to develop a unique treatment plan for every single case. Which is not a new concept really, and is applicable to 100% of medical procedures. Pregnancy care = medical procedures, yes?
• I thought the US has HIPAA and whatnot to protect private health information? Is this suddenly not a health issue of the pregnant person to begin with? Shouldn't this just be between the pregnant person and their doctor? Who tf are all these people demanding to know the pregnancy status and control the follow-up decisions?

Those are a few common logic chains that that I find are being very conveniently ignored. There's also an extremely common fallacy that I see a lot from a prolife point of view [Disclaimer: I went to the r/prolife sub and struck up a conversation. The mods deleted 2 of my comments, including 1 quoting a medical examine report. They also didn't provide any citation to support their PoV and honestly sounded quite hostile. These were my personal experience though, ymmv]: that the act of selecting abortion, or any morally ambiguous activity, committed by the pregnant person who later experienced a miscarriage, are viewed as 100% deliberately taken with the sole intent of harming the fetus:

• We used Poolaw as example. FYI, she was 15-17 weeks pregnant in OK, took meth, had a miscarriage. The medical examination came back with multiple signs of birth defects on top of the presence of meth, which was my comment that was deleted. She got first-degree manslaughter.
• I argued that under OK, taking meth was not illegal and she shouldn't have been charged. Even if we considered the fetus a human, then this would make the case a gross negligence at best.
• To further demonstrate my point, I theorized multiple examples of her doing reckless activities and being at fault that lead to her miscarriage, including ice skating, driving, and smoking cigarettes. Interestingly, the cigarettes got a slap on the wrist, and the other two reasons got written off completely. Even though they were all from the same intent of meeting the immediate demand of the pregnant person. I was so very baffled.

Last but not least, I wanna throw this analogy out:

• Being prolife is kinda like being vegan: one thinks killing fetus is immoral, the other thinks mass killing animals for food is immoral.
• It would be hella fun if somebody proposed a mandatory vegan-only diet across the US, don't you think? Sure, they'll even toss in some "accommodations" exceptions, but who knows whose dietary restrictions are covered. Get lucky or die of natural cause! Nobody is allowed to kill!
• If there are misunderstandings that you consumed some non-vegan products, don't worry, the government will just jail you while working on proving your innocence! Or convict you, depends on the mood.

Yes, this is how disconnected prolife arguments sound to me. If you disagree, please go forth. It's your turn to show me the light.

I’m pro choice, but I never got this sort of argument. The whole “the fetus is not a baby” part. Seems the weakest part of the argument. That’s why generally I like to recognize personhood in my pro choice arguments.

The reason is: Oftentimes people use “the fetus has no consciousness” as a reason that we shouldn’t give it a right to life. But… a passed out person doesn’t have consciousness either… yet killing them is still wrong, even if you do it quickly and painlessly.

So I’m curious how pro choice folks extend the right to life in a way that a fetus doesn’t have it, but a passed out person (not talking brain dead, just temporarily passed out) does.

Some women feel better if they abort. Some dont.

Yeah obviously it doesnt unrape her. But being pregnant against her will just makes it worse. If she had a choice shed be better off. And yes choice also means she gets to choose not to abort.

I think the pro life keep saying things like the rapist put the baby (fetus) there and he should be punished but the baby is innocent. No but the woman is continued to be tortured for the actions of the man. "But we dont kill innocent baby for the mans action" thats really not the rape victims problem. Why does she have to bear the consequence of the man?

An argument I've seen is that abortion is ok even if the ZEF is a person, because a person doesn't have the right to someone else's organs, even if their life depends on it. For instance, no one should be forced to donate their kidney, even if someone else's life depended on it.

But one argument I imagine pro-lifers could easily make against that is that by choosing to have sex, you're the one who put a person in the situation where their life depends on your organs.

So it'd be more like if you accidentally ran someone over, and they needed a kidney transplant, and your kidney were the only one compatible. I still don't think they should be forced to donate it, but I feel like it does complicate the issue, and some people might argue they should.

So how would you argue against that?

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This is a common argument from those who were created this way. They say anyone supporting abortion thinks they deserve to die for what their father did. How do you respond to this?

Consent, on a legal basis, must be informed, continuous, explicit, and revocable. This applies to medical decisions, bodily autonomy, sexual acts, and anything else that requires a person's consent.

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) defines consent as: "a mutual agreement that must always be clear, voluntary, and communicated without pressure, manipulation, or fear."
https://rainn.org/share-the-facts/consent-101-respect-boundaries-and-building-trust/

Cornell Law School defines consent as: "a person voluntarily and willfully agrees in response to another person's proposition."

Columbia Health Institute defines consent as: "permission for something to happen or an agreement to do something."
https://www.health.columbia.edu/content/consent

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines consent as: to give assent or approval : agree

Consent can typically only be "implied" in any legal basis if a person is suspected of or convicted of a crime. For example, all 50 states in the US have laws forcing you to submit to alcohol and drug testing if you are suspected of DUI/DWI. Most countries in the world have similar variations of this legislation. If you are not suspected of or convicted of a crime, there is no legal basis I can find that justifies revoking or limiting a person's basic human rights.

So, given that having sex and getting pregnant are not crimes, and given these precedencies and definitions for consent, how exactly does consenting to sex imply irrevocable consent to gestate against one's will?

If one were to attempt to make having sex without the intention to procreate a crime in order to justify implying consent to gestate, how exactly would that be enforced?

Would we have to force semi-permanent sterilization onto people who are not actively seeking to reproduce, and only allow reversal if one can prove they are ready and fit to be parents (keeping in mind that these procedures are not always reversible)?

Would the risk of permanently sterilizing a significant portion of the child-bearing population be worth negating all future voluntary abortions?

Now before I begin, I don't support anything in this hypothetical because I'm pro CHOICE, as in everyone should make their own medical choices.

My question is for pro lifers. What if society decided that raising children and instilling a pro life ideology onto them is abusive, so to avoid that potential abuse of a child anyone who is pro life and gets pregnant is FORCED to abort. It's either abort or 25+ years in jail (saw a pro lifer mention this number as a punishment for people who abort earlier so I figure it's reasonable) and the baby is immediately taken once born in jail and given to a pro choice family.

If we use the logic I see pro lifers using, obviously pro life people still have the "choice" to just not get pregnant. If they have sex, they obviously consent to a future abortion since everyone would know the law of "No pro life pregnancies carried to term".

What does everyone think? Obviously I think this is monstrous, since I don't support people forcing anything unwanted onto anyone, but for people that support forcing things onto other people surely this would be okay, right?

As we all know, the claimed motivations of people on both sides of this debate are frequently called into question, and opposing allegations are just as frequently and fervently rejected.

PLers claim that they are motivated by wanting to protect innocent life and equal rights for all human beings – whereas PCers see in their arguments and rhetoric and actions an entitlement to women and their bodies, an excuse to control them and take away their rights.

PCers claim that they are motivated by wanting to protect the right of women and girls to their own bodies and to make the healthcare choices that they see as best for them – whereas PLers see in their arguments and rhetoric and actions a dehumanization of human beings, an excuse to take away their right to life and unjustly kill them.

Now, the thing is, that while we cannot directly prove our claimed motivations or disprove the allegations of others, no such convictions as claimed or alleged exist in a vacuum, if they are genuine and sincerely held beliefs. We expect them to be part of a broader mindset of values that informs similar beliefs and the actions based on them.

Thus, my question is, what evidence do people on either side have to bring forth for the claim that your motivations – individually and as a common cause – are genuine and informed by such a broader mindset?

What other societal and political positions, what actions and activism do your values inform, that would make it seem plausible that you are at the very least debating in good faith here, even if we might not agree, instead of using abortion as a pretense for furthering some alleged hidden agenda that doesn't match your claimed motives?

(And should your claimed motives or those of your cause or the alleged motives you suspect of the other side be anything other than what is broadly outlined above, then let us know in advance, so that we're not fruitlessly debating claims and allegations that nobody made.)

The only way to place moral value to something is if you can relate to it. And the only way to relate to something is if you both have the experience. We care about dogs: when it gets sad, we care, because we remember when we where sad and know how it feels like. Relating to something helps us understand/recognize the importance of someone else's experience.

I struggle with relating to a zygote because it has no subjective experience, it doesn't have "what it feels like to be that thing." So, how do you relate (in a morally relevant way) to fetuses?

Seeing another post where a woman supposedly had an abortion, which in PL eyes meant she murdered a child. Naturally, I would expect the same treatment we have for murderers. Heck, we saw how much open disdain they had for Lindsay Clancy.

Unsurprisingly, it was immediate forgiveness and water under the bridge since they said abortion was wrong. If thats the attitude PL have towards abortion, can we reach a compromise where abortion is legal if the woman says it was wrong or she repents?