Are you okay with aborting a child who is already capable of surviving on his/her own outside the mother's womb?
Yes. Edit: I am not sure what kind of job the fetus/baby will be able to have to make money and survive in this world on his/her own.
So yeah, your position is extreme. I think just about all but the most radical pro-choice supporters -including prominent pro-choice politicians- would draw the line at or before that point.
Like I said, I know that, no politician would ever run with that, shit if I ran for office I would make sure I " pivot" about it.
That's a tricky standard (as is any standard applied on the other side of the "birth canal emergence" line, especially as science learns more), as humans in particular (and mammals in general) are massively dependent upon other humans for actual survival for quite some time. We have one of the longest dependent "childhood" of any species. But if you go by a different standard of "viability", one could argue reasonably convincingly that 'infanticide" covers a significant portion of actual gestation.
Well, I think the point of pro-choice advocates is that the fetus is dependent exclusively on his/her mother for survival, at great cost to the mother. That is what as the argument goes gives the mother the moral power of choice. Once society, independently of the mother, is able to keep the baby alive, the whole moral paradigm changes. Then we get into the issues of the role and responsibility of society in protecting and preserving human life.
I am pretty sure that in the short future, we will come out with some medical machines (perhaps they already exist) where we can "grow" a baby with out having to have a mother carry the fetus at all. So, would that change the morality of it?
I think at the very least the moral questions to be explored would be different, yes. But my question was about a baby who was capable of surviving outside the womb with regular baby/child care, without the help of an incubator. Does this clarification change your answer?
The whole abortion question is about as Third-Rail as it gets, but I would favor promotion and education of responsible birth control to reduce the chances that women would need to consider an abortion. Obviously it's a complicated issue, but at least in the very early stages of pregnancy you can make a better case for termination than 8 months later, just before she's going to pop. If you've gone that far, give the baby up for adoption. Of course, all the anti-choice zealots need to support this option and have resources in place for (young) mothers who have no real support system. But those folks are all about The Child until it's born...
That is a bit unfair to many pro-lifers. Most religious pro-life organizations, and in particular the Catholic Church, spend a lot of resources on orphanages and on schools, focusing a lot on care and education of children worldwide. My adopted daughter came from one of these Catholic orphanages, and their involvement made all the difference in her life and mine. Of course, secularists may disagree about the type of education that these pro-life institutions want to provide, but that's a whole different can of worms.
So shouldn't the cutoff time be somewhat related to when the baby would be viable if it was born premature via natural birth or c-section? Personally I think the cutoff time for unlimited abortions should be the "quickening," when the mother first begins to feel movement on the part of the fetus, around midway through the pregnancy. There's historical precedent for that as well.
I think that would be a reasonable cut off point. I would add that sex education should include making sure that all women, including minors, clearly understand that they are empowered by society to make their own choice, within the period of time that society ends up determining to be legal. As a father, and somebody who personally tends to be against abortion, if my daughter was pregnant and asked for my advice, I would tell her frankly how I personally feel about the value of human life, but I would also make clear that the decision is up to her and she needs to explore for herself the moral ramifications of her choice, and that I would support her no matter what she decided. And, I would also want to be able to tell her clearly and confidently that society also accepts whatever decision she makes. That's the society I want to live in.
OK, maybe so, but I was thinking more of the political angle of many "Evangelicals" who tend to be single issue voters ("It's better to vote for a racist than a baby-killer.") A lot of these people go to great lengths to tout the "sanctity of life," yet are the first ones to advocate cutting any social programs that would help people who chose to keep a baby instead of aborting it. I agree that the organizations like the one you mention are doing good things to try and make the best of a bad situation. But the real key is preventative education, so we won't have so many teenagers getting pregnant, instead of waiting 10 more years when they can handle it.
We're doing pretty damn well at lowering teen pregnancy rates, although how much of the decline is due to fewer teenage marriages, that I do not know.
Come on, man! Relegation and promotion can never work in the context of the socialist system that the rich capitalist US franchise owners set up for themselves.. But in a normal sports environment in which the one percent wins all the titles, relegation and promotion is the only way to keep the fans of the other 99 percent engaged.
In furtherance of my Libertarian education, from what I've seen they appear to be mostly pro-choice (Wikipedia) Capitalism Magazine supports the pro-choice position, writing: A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body... There is no such thing as the right to live inside the body of another, i.e., there is no right to enslave... a woman is not a breeding pig owned by the state (or church). Even if a fetus were developed to the point of surviving as an independent being outside the pregnant woman's womb, the fetus would still not have the right to be inside the woman's womb. Libertarians at the November 12, 1989 pro-choice march in Washington, D.C. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_abortion
My sense is that is close to 50/50 from a moral perspective, more like 70/30 in favor of "choice" legally. There have been many a long, detailed exchange with principled arguments on both sides. Interestingly, it is one of the few issues in which the reflex to completely "eat one's own" is actually not that prevalent. We'll tear each other apart on issues where there is much more close agreement, any day of the week. Abortion is significantly less fraught.