Originally Posted by
Smokering
OK, trying to keep on topic here....
How then do you respond to the argument I made in my original post? To recap
"A woman should have every right to her body" - I assume you mean "every right to do what she wants with her body"? But abortion and infanticide obviously involve someone else's body as well - the baby's - so that should really be phrased as "A woman should have every right to do what she wants with her body, even if what she wants to do with it is kill someone else" (or at least, sign the consent form allowing someone else to do the killing).
If you believe that wholesale, then you eventually descend into complete anarchy - if we can all do whatever we want with our bodies, even if harms others, then rape and murder and theft and genocide are all OK. I'm going to assume you don't believe that.
So presumably you mean "A woman should have every right to do what she wants with her body, even if what she wants to do with it is kill someone else, under specific circumstances". Right?
A woman should be able to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. It used to be illegal - one reason it was legalized (in the US, I have no idea what the laws of your country are though since I haven't looked it up) is that women were dying of back alley abortions. It became a public health issue as the infections they were getting from illegal procedures was killing them. Allowing women to get abortions does not take us into complete anarchy allowing people to run around committing mass murders and gang rapes. It's a specific procedure that is made by a pregnant woman because she does not want to continue the pregnancy. The reasons for that are infinite, and depend on a persons personal circumstances. I don't know all the reasons, I don't need to - I believe in a woman's autonomy over her own body, and I believe that a woman's life (a woman who may be married with kids, a single mother who cannot afford another child, a woman who is living in poverty, a woman who is in an abusive relationship and fears telling her husband/boyfriend/partner, etc etc etc) should take precedence over that of a fetus. Allowing abortions - which can only be performed on consenting women by doctors when the woman is pregnant - does not equate to allowing murder en mass, nor does it equate to allowing people to do whatever they want whenever they want to the detriment of society.
So what are those circumstances, and how do the circumstances of abortion (which you think should be legal) and infanticide (which you find "disturbing", although I don't believe you commented on whether you felt it should be legal or not) differ?
The difference between a fetus and a baby is that a baby has been born and is living independent of the mother. A fetus is not living independent, and is inside the mother. That is the difference. I do not believe in infanticide - I think that infanticide and abortion are completely different.
A PP mentioned that a baby in the womb can only be looked after by one specific mother, whereas a baby outside the womb could be looked after by others; but that distinction would seem to assign moral worth to babies solely on the basis of convenience. If it were impossible for a mother to hand over her baby for fostering/adoption; if she were the only person available to care for it; would not infanticide be permissible, under that paradigm?
Using unrealistic scenarios to make your point won't help you either. If a baby (who has been born) is crying and crying and crying and there isn't anyone for 1,000 miles to help you - put the baby down and walk away for 20 minutes or a half hour. Seriously. The baby will live. I'm not a fan of CIO, but a mother who has no help and needs a half hour to chill, won't kill her baby and also won't harm them for life. When you are parenting a baby who has been born, you can get some time away in almost all situations to relax and calm down. Killing the baby isn't necessary. When you are a cocaine addict and you are pregnant, and not able to clean up enough to have a healthy baby, who am I to tell you that you have to carry that fetus to term? It's becoming harder and harder to get treatment for addictions when you are pregnant (at least here int he US) because it is being criminalized to take illegal drugs when pregnant. This deters women from seeking medical care and help detoxing - which adds more public health issues and makes it harder for women to have a health pregnancy.
If her "moral compass" were OK with it, and she wanted to use her body as she pleased (ie not feeding and caring for a helpless baby - or I suppose, by extension, an invalid or otherwise helpless person)... would you believe we didn't have the right to force her to do it, and that therefore she could order the death of the baby, or even perform it herself if she wanted to use her body that way?
Well, in all honesty, we cannot force people to care for babies or invalids. That's why CPS exists in our world, and why people call them when they notice a baby failing to thrive. Or when they see a child being beaten, or otherwise think a family is at risk. We don't have the right to force a mother to feed her children, but we do have the ability to remove those children from her care if need be (well, I don't, but CPS and the courts do have that ability)
In other words: you seem to be pro-choice but anti-infanticide, but what's your reasoning that finds a moral distinction between the two?