When does a med student learn to do abortions?

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Med_Leviathan said:
Because he used an apostrophe in the way a greengrocer does. "Apple's for sale" and all that. It's very frustrating to encounter that type of error when one is trying to converse above an elementary school level.
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That's a great "sentence." Now do you see why people don't publically play grammar police?

Stick to the argument at hand and avoid letting anger post such comments.
 
Panda Bear said:
The post to which I commented seemed entirely too flippant and would embarrase me even if I were pro-coice.
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You should be embarrassed that you are an educated man and you still cannot spell. You do credit to your viewpoints.
 
This thread seems to be very popular. What's going one in here, folks?

Abortion, the woman is damned if she has one and damned if she does not. I think that back in the old days it made more hallucinatory sense not to have one because traditionally America had moral character. However, now you have C- drug addict students turning into presidents, and presidents getting impeached for getting blow jobs, and immoral attacks and invasions on countries, naked people on television, in the nytimes, the new yorker, and science research magazines. Who cares what other people do? I mean if you don't like abortions do not perform them, if you do not mind, then, perform them.

Right=Left=Democrats=Republicans=Liberals=Same Crap.


You people are crazy, really!
 
My favorite girl scout cookie is the samoa.
 
Cinnameg said:
You should be embarrassed that you are an educated man and you still cannot spell. You do credit to your viewpoints.
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You don't have many friends, do you? I mean, other than the people you know through your vice-presidency of the Pre-Med club at your school.
 
Med_Leviathan said:
Because he used an apostrophe in the way a greengrocer does. "Apple's for sale" and all that. It's very frustrating to encounter that type of error when one is trying to converse above an elementary school level.
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"Converse." Har har.
 
It seems people don't want to or don't have the time to read my previous post. So I'll make it reaaaaally simple:

- Abortion kills something.
- Rational people agree that you cannot definitively determine using an uncontroversial method whether that unborn something is human or not.
- Given that there is no uncontroversial way to determine the unborn entity’s humanity, it becomes morally impermissible to abort the unborn.


Two examples:
1) You are a building demolitions manager. You are contracted to knock down a building. Two mobs picket your office. One mob tells you that the building is empty. One mob tells you that there is someone in the building. It then becomes morally impermissible to demolish that building, knowing that it is possible (within reason) that a human may be inside. It would be morally irresponsible to risk the loss of a human life.
2) You are hunting and hear movement in the bushes. You are obliged to not shoot until you are absolutely certain that it is not a human in those bushes. You must err on the side of safety.

If you don't understand this or want to argue it, please read my previous full post in order that we can have an intelligent and informed conversation. I do understand that this is a very sensitive topic to many people. However, I feel there's more intelligent and cooperative conversation to be had than quoting grammar mistakes or other ad hominem fallacies. I really am not trying to start a fight (although I guess I’m jumping into the middle of one); I just want to have a conversation that isn’t a flame war.
 
^^ but YOU believe that the fetus is a human life. There are people that don't, or at least don't put it's potential for life at the same level as an already living breathing woman. And we know, whether or not we are willing to admit or accept it, that desperate women unequivically will die when abortion is illegal. this is already happening, particularly with low-income women and teenagers who face the most barriers to safe and legal abortions. i hear anti-choicers deny this fact or ignore it. i don't hear any concern about these women. just the cliche, oh well they should have been more responsible or need to take responsibility for their actions. in reality, people have sex. contraception fails. people get pregnant without wanting to be pregnant yet and will go to any means to get an abortion. and to neato, i have read all these posts, and one that was interesting was the quote that 77% of all anti-abortion leaders are men, 100% of them will never be pregnant. yes, in it's purest sense this is identity politics. but beyond that, it raises the issue of why are so many of the anti-abortion leaders men? at my school, each one of the 7 officers of the students for life club are men. each one of the officers for MSFC are women. and on this thread the anti-choicers seem to all be men. so why is that? it's much easier to take an elitest view of "responsibility" when you'll never be pregnant. and to bigfrank, i object to killing already living people, so the request to not kill anyone is well taken. i however, put my wife's life as more important than a fetus. and i fundamentally believe that if she and i were to face an unintended pregnancy it is OUR decision what to do. Not neato's, bigfrank, whiteandred, it should not be your right to decide for us what we should do.
 
sportsman said:
^^ but YOU believe that the fetus is a human life. There are people that don't, or at least don't put it's potential for life at the same level as an already living breathing woman. ... i fundamentally believe that if she and i were to face an unintended pregnancy it is OUR decision what to do. Not neato's, bigfrank, whiteandred, it should not be your right to decide for us what we should do.
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1) It's not that I believe that the fetus is human life. I haven't weighed in on this opinion. It's that there is a possibility NOT beyond reasonable doubt that the fetus might be human life. And that possibility, however small, is the crux of the matter.

2) You're right. No one should be deciding for you what to do or what not to do. But what I am trying to point out is that abortion is immoral - not in a religious sense (which again is based on opinion), but in a natural human philosophy sense (which is based on reason). People have and always will make decisions regardless of the morality of those decisions.
 
sportsman said:
^^ but YOU believe that the fetus is a human life. There are people that don't, or at least don't put it's potential for life at the same level as an already living breathing woman. And we know, whether or not we are willing to admit or accept it, that desperate women unequivically will die when abortion is illegal. this is already happening, particularly with low-income women and teenagers who face the most barriers to safe and legal abortions. i hear anti-choicers deny this fact or ignore it. i don't hear any concern about these women. just the cliche, oh well they should have been more responsible or need to take responsibility for their actions. in reality, people have sex. contraception fails. people get pregnant without wanting to be pregnant yet and will go to any means to get an abortion. and to neato, i have read all these posts, and one that was interesting was the quote that 77% of all anti-abortion leaders are men, 100% of them will never be pregnant. yes, in it's purest sense this is identity politics. but beyond that, it raises the issue of why are so many of the anti-abortion leaders men? at my school, each one of the 7 officers of the students for life club are men. each one of the officers for MSFC are women. and on this thread the anti-choicers seem to all be men. so why is that? it's much easier to take an elitest view of "responsibility" when you'll never be pregnant. and to bigfrank, i object to killing already living people, so the request to not kill anyone is well taken. i however, put my wife's life as more important than a fetus. and i fundamentally believe that if she and i were to face an unintended pregnancy it is OUR decision what to do. Not neato's, bigfrank, whiteandred, it should not be your right to decide for us what we should do.
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that is what i meant by personal autonomy, self determination, and privacy. it's not murder if you don't believe that the fetus is a human life or if you don't put the fetus's right to life on the same level as a woman. it is also beyond me to accept that someone else would be telling me what to do with an unplanned pregnancy. ironically enough, maybe 5-10 years ago i would have considered myself pro-life. but as i've decided to not wait until menopause to have sex with my husband, and i know that contraception can fail, there's a risk that i can face an unintended pregnancy. I absolutely do not want anyone else making that decision about what to do for me.

As they say, panda, neato, bigfrank, i will stay out of your uterus if you stay out of mine.
 
Mine has uter-ME stamped on it. Should I exchange it? Is it defective?
 
sacrament said:
This is really creepy. I opened this thread with the intention of mentioning that this was the first time I've ever seen bigfrank post in a thread without mentioning his step I score... and here he is, bringing up step I. Creepy, but hilarious.
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I'm just flattered that, even though you have the absurd (and telling) number of 9,000 posts you were thinking of me. Interesting. 😳
 
sportsman said:
^^ but YOU believe that the fetus is a human life.
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Yes, (regarding human fetuses) I do,

Lets break this down:
Is it human?
Well, it has the human DNA, which sets it apart from all other species.

Is it life?
Well, I don't think any scientist is going to disagree with the fact that something dies when an abortion is performed. In order to die, something must first be alive.

So, how can something be human and be life, but not also be a human life?
 
NEATOMD said:
Yes, (regarding human fetuses) I do,

Lets break this down:
Is it human?
Well, it has the human DNA, which sets it apart from all other species.

Is it life?
Well, I don't think any scientist is going to disagree with the fact that something dies when an abortion is performed. In order to die, something must first be alive.

So, how can something be human and be life, but not also be a human life?
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By that logic, removing a mole would be the exact same thing. It's human tissue with human DNA, setting it apart from all other species. And once removed, that tissue dies (and it once was alive). So my mole must be a human life as well.
 
sportsman said:
And we know, whether or not we are willing to admit or accept it, that desperate women unequivically will die when abortion is illegal.
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And we also know that, whether or not we are willing to admit or accept it, women die when abortions are legal.
 
dante201 said:
By that logic, removing a mole would be the exact same thing. It's human tissue with human DNA, setting it apart from all other species. And once removed, that tissue dies (and it once was alive). So my mole must be a human life as well.
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It is part of a human life, your human life. Just as you cant take the engine out of a Cadillac and call that engine a car.
 
NEATOMD said:
It is part of a human life, your human life. Just as you cant take the engine out of a Cadillac and call that engine a car.
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So why isn't the embryo part of the mother's human life?


When does the pile of parts at the auto plant become a car? Same issue as personhood. When the first few pieces are constructed, is the car a car or just raw materials that have the potential to become a car?
 
Flopotomist said:
My favorite girl scout cookie is the samoa.
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I loves me the Samoas also (maybe too much). Never saw the big whoop about Thin Mints. Ate my first Girl Scout Cookie at age 23.

In Canada we only have Chocolate and Vanilla. And it's Girl Guides here (I was one), not Girl Scouts. Did you know Baden-Powell turns out to have been a pedophile?

Oh, and I wish people would be more down-to-earth in their abortion arguments. Like envisioning a big picture. But I said pretty much all I had to say already; if anyone comes up with an argument worth responding to (or anything new), maybe I'll post again. (Part of me secretly wonders if I fit bigfrank's definition of a thoughtless, shallow liberal - which would be weird, because I think a whole lot). 🙂
 
cdql said:
Mine has uter-ME stamped on it. Should I exchange it? Is it defective?
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:laugh:

"Uter-me", right across the belly - I just found my next tattoo...
 
dante201 said:
When does the pile of parts at the auto plant become a car? Same issue as personhood. When the first few pieces are constructed, is the car a car or just raw materials that have the potential to become a car?
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Actually I like the cake analogy better. Is cake batter a cake? No, it is not. It has all the ingredients of a cake, but it needs to be placed in the proper environment (an oven) for a proper duration before it becomes a cake. Or the old acorn/oak tree analogy.

I'm surprised that no one has questioned the human supremacy inherent in the anti-abortion argument, especially considering we briefly touched on animal rights: a cow has far more sentience and independence than a fetus, after all. A dog does, too.

However, I like staying in the practical, and that means talking about the real world (see my "religious" post). Debating fetal personhood is lovely but gets us absolutely nowhere; even if a fetus were a person, abortion would still be justified. A grown adult, unquestionably a person, doesn't get to use my body against my will, even to survive; if somebody was using me as a personal dialysis machine, say, and I was the only person in the world who could keep them alive, I would still have the right to disconnect that tube from my arm. It's called bodily autonomy, and it's a much stronger right than privacy, meaning that abortion rights are safer in Canada than in the U.S. (Morgentaler uses the former, Roe uses the latter).

Sigh.

I suspect that the anti-abortionists have not even read my posts fully, let alone try to understand them.
 
trustwomen said:
I suspect that the anti-abortionists have not even read my posts fully, let alone try to understand them.
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Well, they are kind of long. All I really get is that if we don't help a woman kill her baby we're to blame if she does it herself with a coat hanger and bleeds to death.
 
bigfrank said:
I'm just flattered that, even though you have the absurd (and telling) number of 9,000 posts you were thinking of me. Interesting. 😳
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Well that was almost, but not quite, as appropo of nothing as bringing up the topic of step I scores. I think you shot your load.
 
Panda Bear said:
Well, they are kind of long. All I really get is that if we don't help a woman kill her baby we're to blame if she does it herself with a coat hanger and bleeds to death.
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:laugh:

OK, I know we disagree on this issue, but that was just FUNNY. 🙂

I wonder if we would be able to have a beer together without one of us storming off. (I suspect we could.)
 
dante201 said:
So why isn't the embryo part of the mother's human life?
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Only because half of its DNA is from another person, that's all. It has (they have, in the case of identical twins) a new and original human DNA fingerprint just as you have your own. One that deserves the same rights that you believe you deserve.
 
NEATOMD said:
Only because half of its DNA is from another person, that's all. It has (they have, in the case of identical twins) a new and original human DNA fingerprint just as you have your own. One that deserves the same rights that you believe you deserve.
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So what do you think of my most recent, non-beer-related post? (cake analogy and bodily autonomy being two arguments that would seem to invalidate yours)
 
trustwomen said:
:laugh:

OK, I know we disagree on this issue, but that was just FUNNY. 🙂

I wonder if we would be able to have a beer together without one of us storming off. (I suspect we could.)
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Oh, I assure you I am a decent enough fellow, well liked by my collegues with the possible exception of some of my fellow interns who are a little put out that I am leaving the Specialty That Dare Not Speak Its Name for Emergency Medicine.

I have been semi-officially kicked off of the Forum That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
 
trustwomen said:
However, I like staying in the practical, and that means talking about the real world (see my "religious" post). Debating fetal personhood is lovely but gets us absolutely nowhere; even if a fetus were a person, abortion would still be justified. A grown adult, unquestionably a person, doesn't get to use my body against my will, even to survive; if somebody was using me as a personal dialysis machine, say, and I was the only person in the world who could keep them alive, I would still have the right to disconnect that tube from my arm.
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Since you like staying practical and talking about the real world so much... Would you mind telling me of a case where a grown adult used another grown adults body as a personal dialysis machine against their will and until the person exercised their right to disconnect that tube from their arm?
 
trustwomen said:
Actually I like the cake analogy better. Is cake batter a cake? No, it is not. It has all the ingredients of a cake, but it needs to be placed in the proper environment (an oven) for a proper duration before it becomes a cake. Or the old acorn/oak tree analogy.

I'm surprised that no one has questioned the human supremacy inherent in the anti-abortion argument, especially considering we briefly touched on animal rights: a cow has far more sentience and independence than a fetus, after all. A dog does, too.

However, I like staying in the practical, and that means talking about the real world (see my "religious" post). Debating fetal personhood is lovely but gets us absolutely nowhere; even if a fetus were a person, abortion would still be justified. A grown adult, unquestionably a person, doesn't get to use my body against my will, even to survive; if somebody was using me as a personal dialysis machine, say, and I was the only person in the world who could keep them alive, I would still have the right to disconnect that tube from my arm. It's called bodily autonomy, and it's a much stronger right than privacy, meaning that abortion rights are safer in Canada than in the U.S. (Morgentaler uses the former, Roe uses the latter).

Sigh.

I suspect that the anti-abortionists have not even read my posts fully, let alone try to understand them.
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That's an interesting point. Never thought about it in those terms before. I wholeheartedly agree with your argument in terms of rape, it not being the woman's intent to dialyze anyone, but the argument doesn't work for me if the woman created the person through intent or carelessness (I'm afraid bad luck would also have to be included with those last two as there's a risk of pregnancy involved in birth control, though not very big if the woman is adherent). You made it, you deal with it. Now, I don't actually think that the fetus should be considered as a full person during the period when most abortions happen, but I just wanted to point out that your analogy doesn't really work, even if it is thought provoking.
 
trustwomen said:
...

A few of you have told me that they are training in EM, and therefore don't plan on doing abortions - to you I answer, EM docs will be especially motivated to provide abortions, once the Supreme Court turns and the dying women start filling the ED again...
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What on earth would motivate me to break the law and provide abortions if it is illegal to do so and the Supreme Court upholds that law considering that I won't do it now when the practice is legal?
 
trustwomen said:
Actually I like the cake analogy better. Is cake batter a cake? No, it is not. It has all the ingredients of a cake, but it needs to be placed in the proper environment (an oven) for a proper duration before it becomes a cake. Or the old acorn/oak tree analogy.
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Can you eat a cake while it is still batter? Can you eat a cake when it has been cooked fully? Can you eat a cake anywhere in between? The answers to these questions are all yes.

Can you not buy both cakes and cake batters from the store? Or would you expect to be given a cake batter for free?
 
Panda Bear said:
Oh, I assure you I am a decent enough fellow, well liked by my collegues with the possible exception of some of my fellow interns who are a little put out that I am leaving the Specialty That Dare Not Speak Its Name for Emergency Medicine.

I have been semi-officially kicked off of the Forum That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
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Yeah, I read your post about counseling overweight patients and I actually agree with you (people seemed pretty uptight about it).

Why are you leaving FP?
 
Panda Bear said:
What on earth would motivate me to break the law and provide abortions if it is illegal to do so and the Supreme Court upholds that law considering that I won't do it now when the practice is legal?
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I see your point.

It's just that a lot of doctors who were against abortion changed their minds once they saw all the dying women - they realized that insentient pea-sized dependent fetuses were not worth this, and that their "death" could not come close to that of the dying women in their care. Then again your views on the fetus seem rooted in something other than empirical observation, so you may indeed hold firm.

And of course some see the light when their own daughters get pregnant too early. Though I assume that you would be consistent in your position - did you not answer flea girl's "your teen daughter gets raped" post because my speculation (about what you would do) was indeed accurate?

For the record, I don't think doctors should be forced to do abortions. I certainly wouldn't want someone who was against it to do one on me. Although if I had my druthers, I would make the "conscientious objectors" choose a specialty other than OB/GYN.
 
Brainsucker said:
That's an interesting point. Never thought about it in those terms before. I wholeheartedly agree with your argument in terms of rape, it not being the woman's intent to dialyze anyone, but the argument doesn't work for me if the woman created the person through intent or carelessness (I'm afraid bad luck would also have to be included with those last two as there's a risk of pregnancy involved in birth control, though not very big if the woman is adherent). You made it, you deal with it. Now, I don't actually think that the fetus should be considered as a full person during the period when most abortions happen, but I just wanted to point out that your analogy doesn't really work, even if it is thought provoking.
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Sure it works. What if I agreed to hook up to the person, but then changed my mind? I'd have the right to. And your notion of "you made it, you deal with it" does not apply in medicine. By smoking, I'm making my tumour too.

Say if I birth a child, I created that person (well, me and somebody else), right? If I was hooked up to dialysis for my child, would I have the right to unhook? Sure I would. I also wouldn't have to donate my kidney to save my child's life, or even donate blood for that matter. It might make me a walking bag of ****, but it's my legal right. Bodily autonomy and all.
 
trustwomen said:
Yeah, I read your post about counseling overweight patients and I actually agree with you (people seemed pretty uptight about it).

Why are you leaving FP?
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Oh man. I am just not that crazy about long-term care and managing chronic disease. I need a little more acuity in my patients. Plus the Duke program is heavily into "Community Medicine" which is an amalgam of low acuity medicine and social work. I really don't want to deal with my patient's social issues. That's why, and stop me if this is obvious, we have social workers. I like to just call the social worker and say, "Can you please help Ms. Smith enroll her children in medicaid? Thanks!" and then not have to screw with it myself.

But now they'll find me and they'll say bad things about me. You're not allowed to say anything bad about primary care.
 
NEATOMD said:
Can you eat a cake while it is still batter? Can you eat a cake when it has been cooked fully? Can you eat a cake anywhere in between? The answers to these questions are all yes.

Can you not buy both cakes and cake batters from the store? Or would you expect to be given a cake batter for free?
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I think you are literalizing an analogy just a bit too much here... But OK, I'll bite. I can eat cake batter, but I am eating cake batter and not a cake. Most people, if you say close your eyes and open your mouth, will (if they don't run away from you first) be able to identify a spoonful of cake batter as cake batter, and a spoonful of cake as cake. Just like most people, when shown a 6-week embryo and a newborn (or a fertilized egg and a newborn, for the fundies) will say that they are not the same thing, and that furthermore this distinction is obvious. If we care to explore the distinction, we can, but it boils down to sentience and viability. Things that all other "oppressed groups" that people erroneously compare fetuses to, even food animals, do have, whereas fetuses do not.

I don't understand your "store" point, but you can only make cake batter at home (though theoretically I could make a fetus at the store, but I might get banned or even arrested). You buy the dry mix at the store but you need to add water and sometimes oil and eggs. Or you could be a real cook, not like me, and make a "scratch cake". Cake batter is only free if you get it from a food bank. I pay about 2.19$ for my cake mix, and I don't expect to get it for free. It does cost me about 10$/month to avoid making fetuses, but I get that reimbursed from my school's drug plan. (Wow, this is silly.) 🙂

It's clear that you will maintain your views on abortion, and that's OK. I'm not trying to change your mind here. I write what I do for the benefit of the lurkers who haven't really thought through the abortion issue (and for the nice people who have PMed me and thanked me for writing on this).
 
NEATOMD said:
Since you like staying practical and talking about the real world so much... Would you mind telling me of a case where a grown adult used another grown adults body as a personal dialysis machine against their will and until the person exercised their right to disconnect that tube from their arm?
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Um, I was making a point about bodily autonomy. I signed my organ donor card, even though I didn't have to. I donate blood usually, but I didn't last time because I had a class. (They didn't come and get me and strap me down.) Somebody out there is gonna die because I'm not donating a kidney - I could easily live with just one, but I don't want to give it up. I'm allowed to not give it, even though they're gonna die because of it.

That's why there was that funny exchange about uter-us vs. uter-me.
 
Panda Bear said:
Oh man. I am just not that crazy about long-term care and managing chronic disease. I need a little more acuity in my patients. Plus the Duke program is heavily into "Community Medicine" which is an amalgam of low acuity medicine and social work. I really don't want to deal with my patient's social issues. That's why, and stop me if this is obvious, we have social workers. I like to just call the social worker and say, "Can you please help Ms. Smith enroll her children in medicaid? Thanks!" and then not have to screw with it myself.

But now they'll find me and they'll say bad things about me. You're not allowed to say anything bad about primary care.
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It's kind of funny - I'm leaving social work to go into medicine (can ya tell?) 😉
 
trustwomen said:
I think you are literalizing an analogy just a bit too much here... But OK, I'll bite. I can eat cake batter, but I am eating cake batter and not a cake. Most people, if you say close your eyes and open your mouth, will (if they don't run away from you first) be able to identify a spoonful of cake batter as cake batter, and a spoonful of cake as cake. Just like most people, when shown a 6-week embryo and a newborn (or a fertilized egg and a newborn, for the fundies) will say that they are not the same thing, and that furthermore this distinction is obvious. If we care to explore the distinction, we can, but it boils down to sentience and viability. Things that all other "oppressed groups" that people erroneously compare fetuses to, even food animals, do have, whereas fetuses do not.

I don't understand your "store" point, but you can only make cake batter at home (though theoretically I could make a fetus at the store, but I might get banned or even arrested). You buy the dry mix at the store but you need to add water and sometimes oil and eggs. Or you could be a real cook, not like me, and make a "scratch cake".
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There are many distinctions between newborn babies and adults as well. Most people would also put a newborn and an adult in seperate categories. Many obvious distinctions are present as well. As a matter of fact, many newborns could be closer in relation to the 6 week old embry.

The point of the store analogy is this: The cake batter has inherent value as does the cake. Similarly, a fetus has inherent value as does the human.
 
trustwomen said:
Um, I was making a point about bodily autonomy. I signed my organ donor card, even though I didn't have to. I donate blood usually, but I didn't last time because I had a class. (They didn't come and get me and strap me down.) Somebody out there is gonna die because I'm not donating a kidney - I could easily live with just one, but I don't want to give it up. I'm allowed to not give it, even though they're gonna die because of it.
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Oh, I get it. Apparently, you are under the impression that you could just one day choose to take back your kidney that has been transplanted into another person.
trustwomen said:
A grown adult, unquestionably a person, doesn't get to use my body against my will, even to survive; if somebody was using me as a personal dialysis machine, say, and I was the only person in the world who could keep them alive, I would still have the right to disconnect that tube from my arm. It's called bodily autonomy
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Well, you're really not gonna want to give up your kidney after I tell you this, but, it doesn't work that way. They're not going to allow someone to die so you can have your kidney back. But, if your kidney happens to go down the crapper, you can probably get in line for someone elses transplant.

You give up your autonomy when you give your kidney up for transplant. On the other hand, you should never have the autonomy to take another human life.
 
NEATOMD said:
Oh, I get it. Apparently, you are under the impression that you could just one day choose to take back your kidney that has been transplanted into another person.
Well, you're really not gonna want to give up your kidney after I tell you this, but, it doesn't work that way. They're not going to allow someone to die so you can have your kidney back. But, if your kidney happens to go down the crapper, you can probably get in line for someone elses transplant.

You give up your autonomy when you give your kidney up for transplant. On the other hand, you should never have the autonomy to take another human life.
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You didn't get my point at all. I wasn't under any mistaken impression, save perhaps that it was worth trying to enlighten you. 🙁
 
I read my last post and it didn't even make sense to me, so:
Let me summarize...
In making the comparison that a fetus is using its mother as a dialysis machine, and potentially against her will, you said that in real life you have the autonomy to chose to stop dialysing someone if you don't want to anymore. Then, you said that the real life situation of this would be to donate your kidney (blood, etc).

But, you can't take a kidney back (or any other organ) once it has been placed into another person. So, I was arguing that in your stated real life situation, you would not have the autonomy that you claimed you would have.
 
NEATOMD said:
I read my last post and it didn't even make sense to me, so:
Let me summarize...
You said, that you have the autonomy to chose to stop dialysing someone if you don't want to anymore. Then, you said that the real life situation of this would be to donate your kidney (blood, etc). But, you can't take a kidney back (or any other organ) once it has been placed into another person. So, in your stated real life situation, you would not have the autonomy that you claimed you would have.
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Sigh. But I could choose not to donate it at all. Or I could say that I would give it, and then change my mind before surgery. Or I could unhook myself from that dialysis machine. I used the dialysis machine because the usual argument against the bodily autonomy perspective is that an abortion is "actively ending a life" instead of "passively ending a life" by letting someone die. My point is that you do have the right to bodily autonomy (you would have the right to disconnect that dialysis, no question) even if it does "actively" end a life.

Please note that I don't consider a fetus a person or abortion to be murder, so this is theoretical for me.
 
trustwomen said:
Sigh. But I could choose not to donate it at all. Or I could say that I would give it, and then change my mind before surgery. Or I could unhook myself from that dialysis machine. I used the dialysis machine because the usual argument against the bodily autonomy perspective is that an abortion is "actively ending a life" instead of "passively ending a life" by letting someone die. My point is that you do have the right to bodily autonomy (you would have the right to disconnect that dialysis, no question) even if it does "actively" end a life.

Please note that I don't consider a fetus a person or abortion to be murder, so this is theoretical for me.
Click to expand...
And the problem is that the fetus is actively "dialyising". Once pregnant, you are past the "choose to donate or not phase". You already are.

I'm not aware of any current form of dialysis machine that uses the blood directly from the veins of another person and pumps it into another. If it does not exist then, it is excluded from "real life" and is not valid for your argument.
 
NEATOMD said:
And the problem is that the fetus is actively "dialyising". You are past the "choose to donate or not phase". You already are.

I'm not aware of any current form of dialysis machine that uses the blood directly from the veins of another person and pumps it into another. If it does not exist then, it is excluded from "real life" and is not valid for your argument.
Click to expand...

Sure it's valid. If you agree that the analogy is morally equivalent, then there is a debate to be had. Pregnancy is indeed a unique situation of complete bodily dependence (which actually makes my point stronger - I say only pregnant women have the right to make these moral judgments about their own pregnancies), but the lack of a current real-life equivalent ("active dialysis" if you will) does not negate the moral debate we are having. If I would have the right to withdraw my tube, I have the right to have an abortion - "person" or no "person".

And you haven't thought about one thing; any woman who experienced contraceptive failure, or was raped, was actively refusing pregnancy. They did not sign that particular "consent form". However, even those who fail to actively refuse pregnancy are not, by default, actively choosing to be pregnant - if you ask them (when they have their unprotected sex), they would say that they don't want to be pregnant. It may be stupid of them not to use protection, but it isn't the same thing as consenting to pregnancy... any more than my walking in the street is "consenting" to being hit by a car.
 
trustwomen said:
Sure it's valid. If you agree that the analogy is morally equivalent, then there is a debate to be had. Pregnancy is indeed a unique situation of complete bodily dependence (which actually makes my point stronger - I say only pregnant women have the right to make these moral judgments about their own pregnancies), but the lack of a current real-life equivalent does not negate the moral debate we are having. If I would have the right to withdraw my tube, I have the right to have an abortion - "person" or no "person".
Click to expand...
but, your whole premise was supposedly based on a "real life" situation remember?
 
NEATOMD said:
but, your whole premise was supposedly based on a "real life" situation remember?
Click to expand...

Just answer the question. Do I have a right to withdraw my tube?
 
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