However…

Most people, IMO, are missing the point in the abortion discussions.

The real question is not whether it IS a fully-fledged, separate (with its own DNA) human life. Of course that is. Nobody denies that. The question has been answered.

Now, the REAL questions are 1) whether the fact alone that there exists another fully-fledged human life can *impose a legal obligation* onto another into supporting it with her own bodily resources, as well to assume all of the physical changes, risk, and pain of that process + childbirth, and 2) _IF_ so, may this obligation be neatly generalized onto all cases of pregnancy during all of their durations or we can draw some limits and exceptions, and 3) _IF_ 2, on what account, i.e. what are the specific principles subordinated to the one established in 1 that allow for the exceptions established in 2?

It is on THAT account that the opinions are divided today.

Most people do not really have an “opinion”, they have a visceral reaction (either way). That is because we have largely lost the ability to argue from PRINCIPLES and to establish a hierarchy among them. So we accept a “right to life”, but it is a vague displaced notion with no context. Is it a negative right only? Or if it implies a positive obligation for others, what are the limits of it? If we accept a positive obligation here, what prevents us from extending it onto other similar contexts where A is in mortal danger if-not for a certain thing done by B? Is a right to “expel” a baby without killing it imaginable, given a technological context in which it could be supported outside the womb? If so, what prevents us from acting on THAT principle in the world of current technology? Are we sure we are not treating pregnancy as a moral stand-alone, as opposed to applying other GENERAL principles to it? etc. etc.

It is on THESE questions that opinions clash today.

The point is that it isn’t as if most lives were valued at all anyway.

The peasants knew their lives weren’t worth anything, as did the lower ranking samurai. And as the peasants were affected by Bushido, they as well as the lower ranking samurai didn’t really value their own lives.

They’d sacrifice their own lives willingly in revolt, or going over their lord’s head and appeal to the Shogun directly to correct their lord’s unjust rule. Which was a death sentence for the entire family, as that was treason against their lord. But they generally got redress for their communities and the injustice corrected.

Again, the life of the individual could not be valued over the interests of the family or community.

The Buke, or warrior caste (samurai), lived according to the warrior code of Bushido. Which over the 268 years of enforced peace of the Edo period eroded to become a mockery of what it was when there used to be real wars to fight. But it is true that they tried to steel themselves to be ready to die for their lord at any instant.

And to commit seppuku if they disgraced their lord, or if they felt their lord had wronged them in protest.

Suicide was a privilege for the upper classes. It was illegal for peasants to kill themselves to escape their misery. If a peasant was discovered trying to commit suicide or survived the attempt, they’d be buried up to their shoulders or simply bound and immobilized in a kneeling position and placed by the side of the road. Passers by would be invited to slice their necks bit by bit with a blade of sawgrass until the peasant died.

Until the Hdeyoshi shogunate the lower warrior castes were drawn from the upper class of the peasantry. There was a possibility of social mobility. Hideyoshi disarmed the peasantry with his famous katana-gari or sword hunt. Tokugawa formalized the divisions of society into the nobility (the powerless Emperor and his court imprisoned in luxury in Kyoto), the Buke, and the priests, and the remainder were commoners. There were distinctions within the groups; farmers were superior in status to artisans, and merchants were the lowest of the commoners.

Then there were the untouchables or Eta.

All the commoners were severely oppressed. Their role was to toil, produce children, and pay taxes. Especially the farmers, in the form of rice. The taxes were set by their lords who were only concerned with meeting their own economic requirements. It didn’t matter to them what the productive capacity of he land was.

When conditions became intolerable the peasants would revolt. So while Japan was generally at peace from during the Tokugawa shogunate from 1600 to 1868 when the Emperor was restored, there were 1240 documented peasant revolts during those 268 years. That’s several dozen during every year of the The Shimabara rebellion lasted 4 bloody months.

However, if you accept them as humans, then you accept their behavior as equal to your own in some degree. Do people really think Leftist, their actions and justifications, are on par with your own actions and justifications?

Many thanks for the info. Given the Japanese demographic curve, they can’t afford any abortions.

Bottom line is … infanticide is a human trait across cultures. I lived in India for a few years. Children are routinely abandoned or treated like cattle…..
They’re poor, they must.
Here, it is convenience …..

DNW:

You may notice that–unless you know something about the author of that piece you linked that she doesn’t reveal in the article–she has not had an abortion. She is “pro-choice” and advocating abortions for others. She refers to her pregnancies but never to her abortions. She says if she needed to in the future she wouldn’t hesitate to have one. But she never for a moment indicates she herself has actually faced that decision and had an abortion.

Not that that matters. I have no doubt that some women have abortions while agreeing that the life within them is human. I just don’t see how that essay was written by one of those women.”

Yes, and I suppose we are focusing on two different things here. I was not even thinking in terms of the emotional investment on some personal level.

You, presumably, focus upon a certain intellectual or emotional disconnect which is necessary for most women who have had abortions, in order to even go through with the process.

What I was looking at was the moral judgment which the author as a woman and advocate of unrestricted access to abortion, was making on the matter of permissible homicide..

She acknowledged that the fetus was a life, a human life; and that it is being killed.

Not only that it is being killed for the ostensible sake of, as is often said, “the life of the mother” (if “mother” is the proper word to use here); but, that the notion of “for the sake of her life” includes issues of subjective life quality, convenience, social opportunity and personal fulfillment … not merely survival and physical health.

Thus, she says: ” … not just in the most medically literal way, but … in the possibilities for them and for their families. ” This, in assuming the woman even has a family, the fulfillment possibilities of which are narrowed by the bringing of a fetus to term and then giving it up.

The author reinforces this framing in an earlier paragraph which I did not quote:

“All [“human”, is implied] life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

The fetus is therefore conceived of by her in the following fashion:

She says it is indeed a human life. The process of an abortion kills a human.

This killing of a human is permissible not because it has done anything criminal, but because it is unequal, and therefore kill-able at the whim, or judgment if one prefers, of the woman who for some months must bear it, if it is to be brought to term, and she then be freed of it.

If this is judged an inconvenience, then the fetus is a human life worth sacrificing for the sake of the bearer’s other options … “always”.

Now, I would guess, and it’s just a guess, that in this woman’s moral economy, the fetus still may not be killed by strangers against the bearer’s will; even though it is presumably unequal to everyone else outside a womb as well, and not just to her.

For example, under her scheme the fetus is no doubt unequal to her male neighbor as well. And should she be unemployed and on welfare the fetus may become dependent on the state, which includes him. Yet I do not get the feeling that she would agree that he might kill it, or “sacrifice it”, in order to reduce his taxes, or lessen the inconvenience to his neighborhood of another welfare dependent bastard crowding it.

For some reason, possibly because she believes she has a property interest in the fetus, possibly because she feels the neighbors will not be inconvenienced in the same way or to the same degree as she would should she have to bear it to term and then give it away, they may not insist it be killed.

That right to kill this unequal human it seems, is her “privilege” (the term is used advisedly) and hers alone, I think we probably correctly assume.

I say correctly, because in a rather significant way, the critical issue here reduces not the life of the victim, nor even the health of the “host”, but to the “will” of the host and its privileging against all moral considerations vis-a-vis this particular “unequal life”.

What her views might be on the killing of temporarily dependent human life outside of the womb, should it be an inconvenience to those who might be determined by some measure to be the most interested parties, other than mere neighbors who pay taxes, I would not guess.

But it would seem to me that if we looked hard enough we could find other somewhat parallel examples of unequal lives, even using a standard generally the similar in almost all respects – apart from the fact that the temporary residence of the dependent takes place for some months in the womb.

I should note too that I am conceding her something more than might be necessary when I refer to a “dependent” human life, since the term she actually used in the quote was “non-autonomous entity”.

Using that rubric, I am sure we could expand our category of the killable-at-will even further.

My optical mouse again. I’ll be typing along and it highlight and delete text at some random point on the screen. It happens in the blink of an eye; sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don’t.

For centuries the vast majority of Japanese, the hyakushotachi or farmers, also known as domin or dirt people, lived on the knife’s edge of poverty. Most individual farms were small, an acre or less. They could barely support a family in even the best of times.

Natural disasters, famines, bandits (during the Sengoku or warring country period just prior to the Edo period especially), and excessively cruel taxation (which was common during the Sengoku and Early Edo, at least) all meant that not all children that were born or conceived could live. For the good of the family, for the good of the community, so that some children would have enough to eat, others had to die.

So for centuries abortion and infanticide were common if sporadic forms of population control. This custom became known as mabiki, which is best thought of a weeding the garden or thinning the herd. By weeding the garden I mean if too many seeds of the desired crop sprout some will have to be uprooted so the remaining ones can grow up strong and healthy.

Buddhism did not condemn this as harshly as our shared religions certainly did. It was seen as a necessary evil, and with enough prayer, ceremony, and appeals for forgiveness the spirits of those killed out of necessity would be appeased, helped to the other world, and could be reborn at a better time.

You know, even up until WWII farmers who were impoverished and couldn’t support their families would sell their daughters to Geisha houses. Which isn’t as bad a fate as you might think as Geishas were and are not prostitutes but entertainers. A Geisha might sleep with a favored guest of her own volition (ADM Yamamoto had one as a girlfriend) but it wasn’t part of her job. But the Geisha was required to work off the substantial lump sum the house owner had given her father, and buy an expensive new kimono every year, so she was in indentured servitude for decades.

But back to the point, in large part that’s how the Japanese view of abortion was formed (also the Taiwanese and Koreans have a similar take, but I’m much more familiar with the history of Japan). They still see it that way. That’s why I said in my first post that the Japanese have come to believe that “certain social norms and values require an act they all admit is a necessary evil.” A young single woman who is a student, who can’t afford to take care of her child unless she drops out, isn’t destroying her individual future. She’s destroying the future of her family. The Japanese individual birth or death or marriage certificates. They have a family registry. They can extract individual entries which for immigration purposes are accepted by the USG as the equivalent of a birth or marriage certificate, but they’re part of a family history.

At least that’s how it was up until the last couple of decades. The sense of obligation to ones family and one’s ancestors is breaking down. Which is one reason why fewer and fewer Japanese are getting married and having children. Which makes the high abortion rate (Japan always had a high abortion rate due to the above factors) insane from a demographic standpoint. But their view of abortion was molded over centuries, it has long been accepted, and I don’t see that changing soon.