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I don't see why lawmakers can't do both of these things.
The point is that if abortions are going to continue no matter what, then the focus should be on prevention of unwanted pregnancies and services that ensure that women will get the help they need if they will go ahead and have the child. Policies to close abortion facilities are nothing more than a political card played by politicians. It has nothing to do with the well being of women or protecting children.
Abortion and infanticide are obviously not the same thing, but for the record, some individuals (such as Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, Mary Anne Warren, the authors of the After-Birth Abortion paper, et cetera) do not consider both embryos/fetuses and infants to be persons/worthy of rights.
I have never been a big fan of Peter Singer and I am aware of those people and I agree that I think they are dangerous and sick.
However, I do not consider a fetus to be a person on the grounds that it depends entirely on the mother's body for its survival, it cannot survive outside of the womb without medical assistance (and even then that is only for the last stages of pregnancy), and it also does not have any significant cognitive capacity.
The point is that if abortions are going to continue no matter what, then the focus should be on prevention of unwanted pregnancies and services that ensure that women will get the help they need if they will go ahead and have the child. Policies to close abortion facilities are nothing more than a political card played by politicians. It has nothing to do with the well being of women or protecting children.
The thing is that if all else remains equal, then bans on most abortions might very well reduce the number of abortions. After all, not all females who will want abortions will actually get them if most abortions are banned.
Thus, I am not opposed to your idea of having a (very) large focus on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and on holding needy pregnant females and mothers out. However, it might very well be better to do both of these things (prevention + bans on most abortions) in combination instead of doing only one of these things.
I have never been a big fan of Peter Singer and I am aware of those people and I agree that I think they are dangerous and sick.
However, I do not consider a fetus to be a person on the grounds that it depends entirely on the mother's body for its survival, it cannot survive outside of the womb without medical assistance (and even then that is only for the last stages of pregnancy), and it also does not have any significant cognitive capacity.
Out of genuine curiosity--do you think that human beings who are on dialysis and/or who need kidney/bone marrow/blood/liver part transplants/transfusions are not persons due to the fact that they cannot survive by themselves (for long, at least) either?
As for cognitive capacity, how much cognitive capacity exactly do you think that one should have in order to be considered a person?
Out of genuine curiosity--do you think that human beings who are on dialysis and/or who need kidney/bone marrow/blood/liver part transplants/transfusions are not persons due to the fact that they cannot survive by themselves (for long, at least) either?
As for cognitive capacity, how much cognitive capacity exactly do you think that one should have in order to be considered a person?
The main difference is that the fetus needs the live off the body of the mother. Let's say for example, that one day you woke up to another person attached to you. They were half formed and in a vegetative state and relied solely on your body for survival. Would you be wrong in having them surgically removed? Even if they probably would be able to become a functional human being in due time?
And someone know needs a blood or bone marrow transplant to survive is a bit different. It is not like they will come up to you and suck the blood from your body in order to live. You have the choice to donate blood or bone marrow, but you are not forced to.
I will admit there a definite gray area with abortion. Specifically the last stages when birth can be induced and there is little need for medical care for the fetus. In those cases, I think the comparisons between abortion and infanticide are not inappropriate. However, the majority of abortions are during the first trimester and very few "Partial-birth abortions" carried out on a healthy fetus in the third trimester.
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