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If you are pro choice, how do you resolve the question of whether mothers should be able to abort their babies based on their gender. This practice is obviously somewhat cultural and is most often thought of in China and India where the ratio of girls to boys birth may be as low as 850 to 1000.

How do you maintain a woman has sole choice to decide whether to carry a baby to term... citing that it is either not a human being yet, or is a human being with no rights. Then make it illegal to discriminate by a gender (or a race) of a fetus that is either not human or has no rights?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ ... 4-06-48-11

This article says pro choice / pro life is not the problem, its the culture or economic realities. Ok... that is probably the root problem, but its very similar in tenor to the argument that abortion should be legal but we just need to all work together to reduce the incidence. As we develop more and more scenarios where we as society decide we can legally restrict a woman's right to abortion, the case for abortion becomes weaker to the point that we have to ask ourselves why we don't just outlaw the practice in the first place instead of restricting it into nonsense.

Course I suppose you could make the same argument against gun rights.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011 ... e-abortion

Does the unborn fetus have a right to be protected from discrimination?

The sex of the baby is most acuratey determned at 18 weeks or 4 and a half months. drop the latest period that you can have a abortion to 3 months, in the first trimester, unless there are medical reasons. You should in reality know if you are ready to have a baby or not by that time. On top of that it cuts down on the higher costs of later term abortion. This would make this whole argument mute if that was followed. The woman still maintains the rights of her body, and couples would not be able to decide on the sex of the baby. If you are so determined to have a boy, pay the 10s of thousands of dollars for the treatments that help to increase the rate of boys being born, even than its just an increased chance no guarenteed results.

Aborting a baby due to the fact that you dont like its sex is in my opinion selfish and a horrible act, aborting a baby cause you do not think you could adequately be able to parent it is a little more justified.

I'm more interested in the philosophical question than how to make it a non issue. I'm more inclined to want to make it as big of an issue as possible since I think many would agree that abortion based on gender of child would be fundamentally wrong.

Is it legal gender discrimination to abort a baby fetus on the basis of gender in the womb (should it be in line with pro choice and keep your hands off my body).

If it is, who is being discriminated against? a lump of flesh that we've granted rights too or a human being who at this stage of development has no rights other than that to not be discriminated against?

Should a woman getting an abortion for sex selection resaons be prosecuted for a hate crime? people killing pregnant women are often charged with 2 counts of homicide.

I bet you can determine sex a lot earlier than 18 weeks... by sampling the amniotic fluid or something.

The question at hand is: When is killing justifiable?

Every person has their own unique perspective on the subject of justifiable killing. Aside from the most radical anti-war leftists, you'd be very hard pressed to find any living human who condemns killing in all cases. War, abortion, the death penalty, temporary insanity, self defense, religious decree... there are lots of reasons people use to justify the killing of another human being (or fetus, in the case of abortion).

Are you asking me how *I* justify gender selection as a reason for abortion? Easy answer: I don't. I have some mental guidelines around what I consider to be justifiable reasons for killing, same as you do. This falls outside my criteria.

Ragorn wrote:The question at hand is: When is murder justifiable?

Every person has their own unique perspective on the subject of justifiable murder. Aside from the most radical anti-war leftists, you'd be very hard pressed to find any living human who condemns murder in all cases. War, abortion, the death penalty, temporary insanity, self defense, religious decree... there are lots of reasons people use to justify the killing of another human being.

Are you asking me how *I* justify gender selection as a reason for abortion? Easy answer: I don't. I have some mental guidelines around what I consider to be justifiable reasons for murder, same as you do. This falls outside my criteria.

If you wouldn't mind, I have a question: do you consider abortion to be murder? I'm a little confused by your post.

Hard to say. A fetus is not a person, though it contains human DNA.

I realize I shouldn't have used the word murder in that last post, as it carries a connotation I didn't intend. I'll edit "murder" to "killing."

Ragorn wrote:The question at hand is: When is killing justifiable?

Every person has their own unique perspective on the subject of justifiable killing. Aside from the most radical anti-war leftists, you'd be very hard pressed to find any living human who condemns killing in all cases. War, abortion, the death penalty, temporary insanity, self defense, religious decree... there are lots of reasons people use to justify the killing of another human being (or fetus, in the case of abortion).

Are you asking me how *I* justify gender selection as a reason for abortion? Easy answer: I don't. I have some mental guidelines around what I consider to be justifiable reasons for killing, same as you do. This falls outside my criteria.

Would a mother's choice to abort a 4 month old fetus (16 weeks) because she didn't want the responsibility be within your justifiable reasons for killing? Or 3 month (12 weeks) fetus?

To me, I find it ironic that America draws the line at around the end of the second trimester. Like everything else, it comes down to looks - when a fetus looks like a person is when most people draw the line.

kiryan wrote:Would a mother's choice to abort a 4 month old fetus (16 weeks) because she didn't want the responsibility be within your justifiable reasons for killing? Or 3 month (12 weeks) fetus?

It's more granular than that. Is the mother a middle-age, well-to-do housewife who decided she just didn't want to be a mom? A 16 year old teenager who did something stupid and got knocked up? Rape victim?

The mother's circumstance and motive is important.

To me, I find it ironic that America draws the line at around the end of the second trimester. Like everything else, it comes down to looks - when a fetus looks like a person is when most people draw the line.

Dunno. For me, it has nothing to do with looks, it has to do with viability. Once the fetus can thrive outside the womb with a reasonable chance of survival, that's where I start drawing the line. So it's not at the end of the second trimester, but usually somewhere within the sixth month.

Ragorn wrote:Dunno. For me, it has nothing to do with looks, it has to do with viability. Once the fetus can thrive outside the womb with a reasonable chance of survival, that's where I start drawing the line. So it's not at the end of the second trimester, but usually somewhere within the sixth month.

Which, ironically, amounts to about a two week difference :)

Teflor Lyorian wrote:

Ragorn wrote:Dunno. For me, it has nothing to do with looks, it has to do with viability. Once the fetus can thrive outside the womb with a reasonable chance of survival, that's where I start drawing the line. So it's not at the end of the second trimester, but usually somewhere within the sixth month.

Which, ironically, amounts to about a two week difference :)

Right. Just like the only difference between shooting a home invader and a pedestrian is about twenty feet :)

Ragorn wrote:

Teflor Lyorian wrote:

Ragorn wrote:Dunno. For me, it has nothing to do with looks, it has to do with viability. Once the fetus can thrive outside the womb with a reasonable chance of survival, that's where I start drawing the line. So it's not at the end of the second trimester, but usually somewhere within the sixth month.

Which, ironically, amounts to about a two week difference :)

Right. Just like the only difference between shooting a home invader and a pedestrian is about twenty feet :)

Only if you care about the pedestrian :)

Lets say the mother is a 32 year old affluent white woman with two small white children say 5 and 3 and she decides to abort a baby at 14 weeks for the stated reason that it is half black. She further states that she intends to have more children as soon as possible.

Justified killing or not?

I'm going to assume you say no, so I ask again, what is the foundation of this gender/race discrimination based on? A human with rights against being discriminated against but not a right to bodily integrity and life, or a fetus that has been granted a specific human right? or ?

Obviously not justified.

Look... if you're curious to know the nuances of my stance on abortion, you can ask. But don't bother asking me politically-charged, leading questions. My perspective on abortion has nothing to do with race or discrimination, and I'm not following you down that path.

I get the feeling that Ragorn is like most Americans. It's not a human until he feels like it's a human.

Well yes. I am like 100% of Americans, in that I have my own beliefs about when a fetus becomes a human.

Well thank you for entertaining my leading questions. Questions of this nature, as contrived as they may be, are the main tool in determining the rightness of a moral or ethical view.

For me its impossible to separate two scenarios where one is "wrong" because the intent of the woman is to discriminate against a african american child and another where the woman simply chooses to abort a fetus based on her financial prospects. I concede that intent can be a factor in separating degrees of rightness or wrongness, but at this point I am left wondering whether its wrong because its discrimination and how you can discriminate against something that has no rights and isn't even a human being by the current standards. Its no different than cutting out a tumor according to the pro choice lobby. How do you discriminate against a tumor?

Ragorn wrote:Well yes. I am like 100% of Americans, in that I have my own beliefs about when a fetus becomes a human.

To modify that, however: a lot of people make the conscious decision to defer judgement and extend protection to fetuses all the way to conception, despite their personal beliefs.

Likewise, a lot of people stretch this to whatever is convenient for them, while still judging others to a different standard.

To Kiryan: it's not supposed to be uniform. It's human judgement. Things can be wrong for different reasons, thus without consistency.