Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
It's not inconsistent. For the state to limit access to a medical procedure and take it out of the hands of the doctor and the patient, then there is the burden to show that there's some sort of harm taking place. Absent that, it's purely a medical decision, which is what Altaguy is saying. Sure, if doctors were aborting infants during labor, or people were regularly getting 35+ week abortions for non-medical reasons, then maybe it would warrant government intervention. But we can only deal with the reality that exists, and that's one where late term abortions for non-medical reasons are basically non-existent.
When someone gets a limb amputated or goes on chemotherapy, we don't require that the patient and the doctor justify that to the state and get permission. That's because those things (like late term abortions) are invariably done for medical reasons. Now if people started abusing that and causing widespread harm as a result, then maybe there'd be an argument that the state should intervene as they do in other medical situations (i.e. restricting access to some prescription drugs).
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Again, you are conflating two different arguments. The first argument is that this is analogous to amputating a limb or going on chemotherapy. If that is your position, then it doesn't matter WHEN you amputate that limb or go on chemotherapy. There's no debate about whether the timing of when you amputate your limb makes that amputation a more or less immoral act. If that is what you think abortion is, effectively, then the "reality that exists" about late-term abortion is totally irrelevant, according to your own view of what late term abortion actually entails - just like it would be for late term chemotherapy or late term amputation.
As to whether there is harm, you are assuming that everyone agrees about what constitutes "harm", and that harm to the foetus is not a relevant consideration. That is a point about which reasonable people can differ. The statistics indicate that very few foetuses are aborted late term, proportionally speaking. It's also the case that very few babies are murdered between their birth and their first birthday, proportionally speaking. If the position you're arguing against is that those are morally the same action, and should be treated the same by the law, you're not going to convince anyone who believes that, any more than you'd be able to convince them that it's not worth worrying about the murder of 6-month-olds because mothers murdering their 6-month-old is rare.