Peterkin

I'm considering "them" - by which I suppose you mean the various moral positions. I'm just not discussing them in this venue, since it's meant to be about the legal decision, and my tolerance for thread deraliment doesn't stretch that far. . And by what authority am I required to favour a side? I dodged the same herring I've been batting away for pages now. And I'm still not 'advocating'. I offered the supposition that most women who had already brought a baby to term would not choose to kill it, unless they believed that every other option available to them was worse. If you believe those "sides" to be equivalent, you are woefully underinformed.

I'm not arguing at all. I'm delineating the legal, medical and social issues involved in decisions that are - instead - made on political and 'moral'* grounds. Healthy, bonnie babies may be included among the unwanted and unwelcome, and afaics, no provision is being made for them, which will have long-term social consequences as well as personal. Should the society that insists of bringing them to term make provision for such healthy babies, I do believe we could safely let the mother decide whether to give birth. It is, however, far more likely that late-term abortions will be of unhealthy, unsightly, unviable infants whose brief post-partum would be a misery in any case. (As the Vat has point out on several occasions) BTW - none of them bounce. You're the one painting the picture. Obviously. Has anyone said otherwise? But infanticide - whether it's euthanasia or murder - was not in this discussion.... ...up to now... Yet another dark realm opens, and none of us with a flashlight. * Morals are amorphous, subjective, partisan, ill-defined and difficult to discuss - which is why I haven't.

How'm I supposed to know?

I think most of us have been aware that the egg fertilized by a human male in a human female has a 99.99% probability of being human. Now, it's the people with sufficient cause to be outraged. Makes a change.

Degree of aliveness is not the issue; it is not a legal question. Degree of humanness has never been anyone's issue but yours. The medical position is to decide at what stage of development a foetus is viable - 22+ weeks of gestation. This is a contentious line, since the infant in question is so premature as to need the most advanced technological intervention to survive. Which opens the further question as to the stage of viability in different conditions, locations and circumstances. There is a further medical complication in that a viable unwanted foetus is still unwelcome in the womb it's inhabiting: those who want to 'save' it also want to leave it in situ; she who wants to be rid of it considers it a parasite there. (Yes, parasites are alive and many of them are human.) A further social complication is that nobody else wants the premature babies, either - least of all the medical community, who have enough problems just now. Hardly anybody wants the full-term ones, or has shown any indication of making provision for them, and the decisions about their long-term future do not seem to be a concern for the pro-lifers so het on saving them from 'a painful death' they don't even know about, for a painful life they - not the pro-lifers - will have to suffer through. The legal position is much simpler. What is a citizen? At what point in its development does a human qualify for citizenship in its own person? At what stage of life and what circumstances does a citizen lose power of attorney over their own life and become a ward or the state? What pro-choice advocates say or don't say has no influence on what the the so-called pro-life advocates want. That political banner was unfurled, ready for war, in the 1970's, and they've been yelling slogans and breaking windows too loudly to hear anyone's argument, ever since.

Rocks.

No, they meant arms in general. They knew stuff like that had replaced earlier stuff and later stuff would replace that stuff and the militia would always use the latest stuff. Give them some credit!

It just says "Arms" - easily interpreted as everything from spears to nuclear missiles.

It does sound similar to the fawn and the baby seal mentioned earlier. I guess mothers can't take any chances.

God never put in an amendment formula; they did.

So, we move into yet another realm... Yes, there are obligations and responsibilities imposed on citizens, and laws that curtail, limit and condition the rights of citizens. If a society as, a legal unit, has taken on the obligation to protect its members, then it becomes incumbent on each capable member of that society (not just the ones who voted for that law) to fulfil those obligations. Every such obligation decreases the individual's freedoms and rights. So, if a society, as a legal entity, decrees that all of its members have a right to medical attention, then all the members, whether they voted for universal health care or not, have an obligation to contribute. The society may even decree that no member has a right to refuse treatment on behalf of a patient who can't exercise their rights. If that society decrees that human kidneys are community property, then members with failing kidneys may claim one from a healthy member, and the healthy member has no right to refuse. If all uteruses are community property, then presumably women who cannot carry a foetus to term may have a right to colonize someone else's for the gestation period; presumably, men whose spouses are infertile have a right to impregnate handmaids, etc.

Okay. Say they do. There is baby wearing diapers lying on the grass in the park, crying. We all leave it alone, because it's not breaking any laws: its genitals are covered, there is no Keep off the Grass sign and public weeping is legal in my district. Nobody's violating its rights by walking past. There were legal documents prior to the bill of rights that outlined which humans had which rights.

Protection Act. Not Bill of Rights. That quite clearly states that Nova Scotia law protects animals. That places limitations on the rights of humans, and imposes obligation upon humans. It does not a confer rights to animals. For most human organs while under the auspices of a fully functional adult human brain, yes. Doesn't include the uterus, apparently. Actually that foundational concept was only extended to women and people of African descent as late afterthoughts. The basis of inherency isn't all that clear-cut, either.

That's why humans learned early on to cover themselves with the skins of other animals that do have fur and make slings and wrappings for the babies they carry. They still do. Also fathers and uncles, when the baby gets bigger. Beyond that, there are other strategies adopted by many animals that can't carry their young: shared nursery duty where the young are pooled and presided by several members of the group while others are busy foraging or building or other chores. There is somethng to be said for the cohesive community vs nuclear family.

A dog has the protection of the state. Some dogs. Some states. Up to a point. You can put it down, kill it, force it bear young, buy and sell it, abandon it, even torture it if you're wearing a white coat. Some of us may pretend that the meager protections amount to a right for the dog to exercise, but it's no such thing. Any more than the tug-of-war over ownership of a human egg, sperm, foetus or child amounts to rights exercised by that child. The mother is able to exercise rights, and is prevented from doing so by the protection extended by the state to a foetus whose desires cannot be known. It's about ownership. (I was going to say simply about ownership, but it's not simple at all.) The whole right-to-life thing is a great big puff of smoke. I was explicating as how it doesn't, can't, and hasn't any. But then, I've thought seriously about this concept and have a definition.

I have. What's humanness got to do with it? That's an element beyond alive/non-alive, living/not living. The species of the biological does not affect its viability, but does affect the legal position. So, now the legal position is not about viability, but species identity. Viability is never guaranteed by stage of development: many foetuses do not survive to term; many newborns do not survive the first minutes, hours or days post-partum. There is nothing magical about the moment - more generally, in humans, several hours - of birth. Nor is the newborn, whether viable of not, an independent entity; it can't have rights, because it can't live its life: it has to be owned by some adults for a considerable time. I have been in that majority since before it was a majority.

There is also the distinction between rights and protections. Something that can't decide or make its desires known can't exercise its rights; it can only be taken under the protection of a decision-making entity that purports to represent its best interests. A foetus can't exercise any rights - only the ownership of it is in contention. A dog, which is aware, able to make decisions and exercise its own will, still doesn't have rights: it is living a life owned by others.

I could have sworn I was clearer than that. Every cell in your body is alive and no cell in your body is living a life, or has a right to life. You can kill any cell in your body without committing murder or removing a living entity from the world. You can kill all of them at once, thus removing a living entity from the world, and still not commit murder. Some governments and religious organizations outlaw suicide on the grounds that a person's body is God's property, not their own, while some permit another party to assist in suicide, because the person in the body is presumed to own and have all rights of decision over each body. Slugs, ants, mice and pigs also are alive as well as living lives, while the cells in their bodies are alive but not living lives. You can remove any of these entities from the world, either cell by cell or as a whole, with impunity as regards human law in most countries, but some religions forbid the taking of lives lived by other entities, as they are not considered to belong to mankind but have a right to their own lives. Aliveness is not all equal under the law. Here comes the full-term herring again. Just for dramatic effect, knowing that this is not the situation with the vast majority of legal abortions. All the arguments have been made previously in multiple media on multiple platforms, in legal, moral and medical debates, as to what constitutes independent existence, at what stage a foetus is viable, has the ability to live its own life, and at what stage it has the potential ability with external help, to live its own life; at what point it can be declared no longer being the property of the the mother, but a ward of the state, and at what stage of development a child that has already been born and is therefore under the protection of the state can be considered to have a life of its own with autonomous decision-making rights, and during that minority, how much control is exercised by parents and guardians and how much by the state. And even, in the more advanced countries, what obligations the state owes to mothers, children, infants and foetuses. The minute before/minute after argument is the weakest argument of all.

Evidently. And they have lots of well-funded megaphones.

Those decisions were the norm for 50 years. At least in civilized countries. What are those arguments? I have not heard them. They really ought've spoken up before their states passed laws forbidding abortion at any stage, and took away one exception after another, and closed one family planning clinic after another. It's all academic now. Incapacitated, imprisoned, intimidated, inebriated or in love, women are no longer to be a given any choice as to whether they give birth to a well-developed, underdeveloped, defective, addicted, malnourished, soon-to-be-neglected and potentially abused baby or not.

It's not an argument. It's a historical and psychological reality. People pushed to walls take desperate actions. What I might or might not condone doesn't come into it: I don't stand in judgment over those women: Clarence Thomas does. Yes, I do. Much depends on the method employed. As with the execution of adults who do know what to expect, and are forced to expect it for years (a situation strongly supported by the "pro-life" faction) , it can painful or painless, fast or slow. By back-street hack, probably slower and nastier than by skilled surgeon. And why would you wait for it to be "well-developed" anyway? I'd get it done before the foetus had any pain receptors at all. No. Being alive (passive) however, is not equivalent to living (active). Everything has an unquestioned right to be alive until it's dead, but hardly anyone has an unquestioned or uncontested right to live. I don't consider an earthworm to be less than alive, either. So, should we make a law guaranteeing the earthworm's right to live - but only up to the moment somebody threads it onto a fish-hook?

Right to get born. Right to live is to be negotiated, hour by hour, with the environment into which the infant is born. Who said it's painful? Who said it gives the newborn any chance - lat alone right - to avoid more painful deaths?

That's exactly what happens when sex education, birth control and abortion are made difficult or unattainable. That's exactly what the old guys are forcing some young women to do. The second least good option is to abandon the baby in a shopping mall or hospital (convents being rather thin on the ground). The third option - best or worst is in POV is suicide relativelt early in the pregnancy, or an unskilled illegal abortion, which may amount to the same thing, only slower. Welcome to the Middle Ages!

What rights are being 'supported'? That wasn't the subject, and that wasn't my reference https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8274866/ Traditionally, the anti-choice factions also disapprove of birth control and accessible medical care for the poor. Guess who tends to be poor! Guess why! Now, tell me exactly what post-natal support will be offered to the unwanted and unhealthy (because the mother is, and there is no prenatal care available to her) child of a scared 16-year-old with a new baby and no job? Free vaccinations and daycare with a safe, clean accommodation and job-training for the mothers next door, wholesome meals provided, so that they can breast-feed their infants?

Just tell us the winners. It's a shorter list. Unfortunately, it';s always really been about Black and White. Not all. That means the collateral damage is not 100% - only ... what? 50% 20% ... Just the silly girls who fell for a lie and irresponsible grown women who got drunk at a party? Isn't the punishment for such moral missteps a wee bit disproportionate? What's the men's penance? In olden days, they - some of them, at least - got stuck with the bill for an abortion; a very very few pay child support. Most of the women affected can't afford a paternity suit, so they just walk away - and more of them will. Do not count on this!There are worse things capitalist medieval America can do to a bastard than not let him - or, more pathetically, her - come into their world. Hooray for the 2%! Phooey on the rest. I suspect the non-ideal world was not shaped by the people who will be most intimately affected by this new status quo, but rather more by the people who have been pushing this particular manure-pill down this particular incline for decades. Worlds do not come into being by the decree of gods or philosopher-kings; they are shaped by those with the power and influence to do so. That was never going to be a teenager in love. Really? I did not know that!