House Republicans submit HR586 - Human Life begins at fertilization - Polidicks

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51716859]You're generalizing an entire group of people for the actions of a few. Point out how I made a false equivalency?[/QUOTE] These #shoutyourabortion types claim to speak for all women and the pro-choice side, and I have too often seen pro-choice people defend them rather than call them out. Meanwhile a stupid black man does not represent all blacks and I doubt they would claim that their mental ability does. Only a racist or a fool would believe that. Also, snowmew I forgot to mention before but nice goal post shifting.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51716867]I'm sorry, but are you a doctor or other medical professional? Have you at least had nuanced discussions with one? I can tell you I have with a family member who works as a medical professional in a major city with poorer mothers and children, who has told me they too often see it being pushed as birth control.(inb4 blah blah blah anecdote bullshit) But yes I would argue the only factor would be death for the mother. Killing a child just because they might not survive is too close to eugenics, something we should never again allow for. Anything else is what I would consider an accepted risk when one has sex.[/QUOTE] I am not a medical professional. I am a law student, which is why the legal justification for legislation of abortion is of interest to me. So you argue that the [i]only[/i] reason for abortion should be in the event of the mother's death. Again, as I asked above, what chance of death? As someone who has a family member who works as a medical professional, you should have known that no medical procedure, including childbirth, has certain results. Would you say that a 90% chance of a mother's death would be adequate justification for abortion? What about 80%? 60%? 51%, 50%, 49%, or less? At what point does the certainty of death preempt the child's opportunity at life? [QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51716867]Also, snowmew I forgot to mention before but nice goal post shifting.[/QUOTE] I merely asked if that was your stance on abortion. You were free to say no, and those "goalposts" wouldn't apply to you; it is far from the end of my line of questioning either way. Your responses implied strongly that a medical exception was the only way you could personally justify abortion.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51716897]These #shoutyourabortion types claim to speak for all women and the pro-choice side, and I have too often seen pro-choice people defend them rather than call them out. Meanwhile a stupid black man does not represent all blacks and I doubt they would claim that their mental ability does. Only a racist or a fool would believe that. Also, snowmew I forgot to mention before but nice goal post shifting.[/QUOTE] Maybe women are just sick of being guilted about having abortions.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51716706]I must however disagree - you don't have a right to abortion.[/QUOTE] The Supreme Court would be inclined to disagree.

[QUOTE=Berman Slick;51716736]See, that's my problem.. it's where I'm half and half against and for abortion. I don't think it's anyone's right to kill another human being, or stop them from being able to have a chance at life (who knows who they will become?), but it's scary and very difficult for the mother to go through with having a child that was the result of sexual assault.. literally and figuratively carrying that burden for 9 months, only to have to put them up for adoption if they can't/don't want to take care of them.. but murdering that child because someone did you wrong? It just makes my skin crawl. Punish the rapist, but not the child. Idk where I stand on abortion, honestly[/QUOTE] Aborting a fetus is not killing a child its assuring a child wont be born. And honestly forcing parents to raise a child they cannot afford or cannot love is twice as cruel, you're basically assuring the child will have a shitty life.

[QUOTE=Bertie;51716376]I'm very much against what the Republicans are doing here and I support the right to abortion (not 9 month abortion though), but it's important to understand who you're talking to and what they believe in.[/QUOTE] 9 month abortion is called birth m8.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;51716908]The Supreme Court would be inclined to disagree.[/QUOTE] They did not outright say you have a right to abortion. They claimed you have a right to privacy that wide-reaching and encompasses the the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Semantics, I know, but in law semantics is everything. [QUOTE=Snowmew;51716903]I am not a medical professional. I am a law student, which is why the legal justification for legislation of abortion is of interest to me. So you argue that the [i]only[/i] reason for abortion should be in the event of the mother's death. Again, as I asked above, what chance of death? As someone who has a family member who works as a medical professional, you should have known that no medical procedure, including childbirth, has certain results. Would you say that a 90% chance of a mother's death would be adequate justification for abortion? What about 80%? 60%? 51%, 50%, 49%, or less? At what point does the certainty of death preempt the child's opportunity at life? I merely asked if that was your stance on abortion. You were free to say no, and those "goalposts" wouldn't apply to you; it is far from the end of my line of questioning either way. Your responses implied strongly that a medical exception was the only way you could personally justify abortion.[/QUOTE] To answer your first question, I am aware. And as a not medical professional, I would have to defer to the consensus of that field if I were to base legislation around such whether or not a specific condition would justify an abortion. However, I must bring us back to the fact that this is a small minority we are talking about here. You're nitpicking over minor details no-one outside the profession could hope to answer accurately. And as a law student, you should know (Or I would hope you've learned that) shifting the goal posts like that is a good way to make yourself look like a fool in court. It makes for a weak argument. You're trying to find the pigeonhole for a proper "gotcha" moment against me. [QUOTE=Lambeth;51716755]Be pro choice, it's easy! Either the woman wants to have an abortion or she doesn't! She should be the only one to get a say in the matter![/QUOTE] What about the father? It takes two to tango.

Just realized there were comments on this. So I'll add to the discussion another way. This will never pass

[QUOTE=Llamaguy;51715880][URL="https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/"]Find your rep, and call them about HR586[/URL][/QUOTE] This link is for state legislature. Here is the link for your U.S. House Representative. [url]http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/[/url] May want to update the OP with this.

Also the government shouldn't be meddling with medical definitions anyway, who are they to decide when human life technically begins.

Wonder how many people fly to canada to get abortions.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;51717057]Wonder how many people fly to canada to get abortions.[/QUOTE] How many will die from black market abortions?

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51716509]Didn't someone in a previous thread say this was a way to keep the poor and stupid, poor and stupid? Putting on my tin foil hat for a moment here, but it wouldn't be the unrealistic that's happened over the course of human history. The catholic church of ye olde days comes to mind. The more ignorant and mindless the population was, the more powerful the church became. They didn't [I]want[/I] to educate or help them. It was against their best interests. Replace catholic church with corporations.[/QUOTE] This is dumb though since it doesn't benefit corporations. A woman who's pregnant, gives birth and raises a child has to take time off her job to do all of those things. A woman who aborts the fetus she carries does not.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51717003]What about the father? It takes two to tango.[/QUOTE] Well from a purely biological perspective, once the baby is growing, the mother has final responsibility for what happens to it. Just as the father wouldn't be able to force the mother to get an abortion, he also cannot force her to not get one if she's truly set on getting one. Though if you're at the point where one of the partners truly wants the child while the other truly does not, the relationship is probably over.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51717003]They did not outright say you have a right to abortion. They claimed you have a right to privacy that wide-reaching and encompasses the the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Semantics, I know, but in law semantics is everything. To answer your first question, I am aware. And as a not medical professional, I would have to defer to the consensus of that field if I were to base legislation around such whether or not a specific condition would justify an abortion. However, I must bring us back to the fact that this is a small minority we are talking about here. You're nitpicking over minor details no-one outside the profession could hope to answer accurately. And as a law student, you should know (Or I would hope you've learned that) shifting the goal posts like that is a good way to make yourself look like a fool in court. It makes for a weak argument. You're trying to find the pigeonhole for a proper "gotcha" moment against me.[/QUOTE] You claim that in law semantics is everything, then you turn around and defer to medical professionals on a wholly legal question. Again, you tiptoe around my questions without actually giving a concrete answer, and instead blindly attack my method of questioning. If a medical professional says that a pregnant woman has [i]precisely[/i] a 51% chance of death, no more, no less, if she continues with childbirth, and [i]precisely[/i] a 1% chance of death if an abortion is performed, do you believe it is justifiable to deny her an abortion and force her to continue knowing that the restriction would cause her a 50% loss of chance at life? The reason we're talking about this "small minority" is because you claim it is the only way women should be allowed to have abortions, but don't actually put your money where your mouth is and come out with a hard-and-fast rule. You prefer to weasel out of commitment by answering vaguely or not at all. Instead of relenting and admitting that you have absolutely no justifiable right to regulate abortions prior to viability (in which case, the argument branches off into "why should a mother house a viable child through the remainder of pregnancy?"), you prefer to stubbornly sit there and say that abortion should be illegal just because you feel that way, and then turn around and try to exploit the law by allowing a medical exception that you don't have a solid justification for. Since there is no way to convince you that your feelings are wrong, the only way to chip away at this specious reasoning is to attack the "weak point" of your stance. If you say "yes, I would stop her from having an abortion", you out yourself as someone who is ready and willing to have, statistically speaking, half of the expectant mothers in that situation die solely because of your moral beliefs. If that is something you are willing to accept, fine. However, in the world of law, which is predominantly the world we're operating in when legislating abortion, why is a child's right to life more important than a mother's? On the contrary, when judging the value of a life in wrongful death suits, a child's life is significantly [i]less[/i] valuable on the grounds that their economic benefit to society will not be realized until they are an adult, and until then, they are essentially a net loss. If you compare the economic value of a dead fetus to an average dead mother, the mother will almost always be more valuable to society. If, instead, you say, "no, I would allow her to have an abortion," it again invites the question: at what point is it [i]not[/i] okay? There is no such thing as a risk-free childbirth, so where do we draw the line? Again, you refuse to answer this question, and instead "defer" to medical professionals, who aren't legal professionals. Ultimately, the end-game of this argument results in your position being indefensible without ascribing economic values to the lives of the mother and child, and having the law "choose" who is to die based on which life is more valuable. If you're not going to define wholly arbitrary probabilities as limits (which you rightfully shouldn't), that's the only answer to what the percentage should be - at which point the economic value of either choice is identical. Is that something you're willing to accept? Because that sounds an awful lot like the whole eugenics thing you were afraid of earlier. A medical exception results in essentially the [i]definition[/i] of eugenics. The only way to avoid that is to either outright ban or outright permit abortions, or decide based on other criteria, but you won't do any of those. And yes, there is your "gotcha" moment.

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51716509]Didn't someone in a previous thread say this was a way to keep the poor and stupid, poor and stupid? Putting on my tin foil hat for a moment here, but it wouldn't be the unrealistic that's happened over the course of human history. The catholic church of ye olde days comes to mind. The more ignorant and mindless the population was, the more powerful the church became. They didn't [I]want[/I] to educate or help them. It was against their best interests. Replace catholic church with corporations.[/QUOTE] That was my first knee-jerk, reactionary thought when I heard this. Whether or not it's true is another matter entirely, but if you wanted to keep the poor poor then this would sure as hell be a good way to do it. People aren't just going to stop having sex because you take away their ability to abort, and some of those people are bound to get pregnant due to carelessness or chance. Some people will be in a good enough financial position in life to take care of the accidental child, and some people will not. Those who are not well off are going to struggle to raise the children they didn't intend to have, their children probably aren't going to grow up decently educated, and without decent education those children are going to grow up into easily manipulated voters who are riled up by emotional rhetoric and lies about making their lives better/easier by bringing jobs back and the like (because, fuck, they've been dealt a shit life in hand and they really could do with it). Politicians who are sensible and sane -- who try to use logic, reason, and facts -- are going to be crushed by politicians who spew misinformation and lies, because the uneducated masses will just lap it up without a second thought.

[QUOTE=The Vman;51717079]Well from a purely biological perspective, once the baby is growing, the mother has final responsibility for what happens to it. [B]Just as the father wouldn't be able to force the mother to get an abortion, he also cannot force her to not get one if she's truly set on getting one.[/B] Though if you're at the point where one of the partners truly wants the child while the other truly does not, the relationship is probably over.[/QUOTE] To be fair, this is extremely debatable in our society since the father's [I]expected[/I] to provide for the mother and child, whether he actually wants to or not. If a man is in a situation where he'd be socially and legally expected to provide for a child, then he should also have a word in what happens to the soon-to-be money vacuum that is a newborn.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;51717099]To be fair, this is extremely debatable in our society since the father's [I]expected[/I] to provide for the mother and child, whether he actually wants to or not. If a man is in a situation where he'd be socially and legally expected to provide for a child, then he should also have a word in what happens to the soon-to-be money vacuum that is a newborn.[/QUOTE] Rights of your own body trumps economic rights, in my opinion.

[QUOTE=Bertie;51716376] (not 9 month abortion though)[/QUOTE] Lmao pretty sure that's called birth. Seriously, nobody would ever perform an abortion 9 months in unless there was a severe risk that giving birth would endanger the life of the mother, and in that case, terminating the pregnancy really is the right thing to do. Why should the mother and the child both die when one could be saved?

To those who oppose abortions, do you have a pragmatic reason to oppose them? By pragmatic I mean removing any emotion from the matter. The thing about our morality is that most of it is dictated by pragmatism. You are kind to others so that others would be kind to you. Murder and stealing is wrong because you yourself do not wish to be murdered or stolen from. But abortion affects something that has no capacity for consciousness. You can't say you wouldn't want to be aborted because it cannot possibly happen to you, since you have already been born. If it's because it may [I]potentially[/I] lead to someone being born who is a productive member of society, then you're dictating law off alternate realities. There's an infinite number of things that may lead to someone being born, whether someone sneeze on a tuesday, or whether a leaf falls in a puddle. Maybe because I didn't ask out the girl at the coffee shop I prevented the next Einstein from being born. You can't start trying to dictate what people can and can't do with themselves based off an unknowable future. [editline]23rd January 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Ganerumo;51717099]To be fair, this is extremely debatable in our society since the father's [I]expected[/I] to provide for the mother and child, whether he actually wants to or not. If a man is in a situation where he'd be socially and legally expected to provide for a child, then he should also have a word in what happens to the soon-to-be money vacuum that is a newborn.[/QUOTE] I'm not saying the father shouldn't have a word in the matter. I'd hope that if someone in a couple was considering an abortion then there'd be a thoughtful discussion on the matter between the two. I'm just saying that, since the mother is the only one who physically [I]can[/I] have an abortion, it's her final say as to whether it happens or not. [editline]23rd January 2017[/editline] Like the only way the father could [I]force[/I] the mother to have an abortion is if he either threatens her life or performs it himself.

[QUOTE=The Vman;51717144]To those who oppose abortions, do you have a pragmatic reason to oppose them? By pragmatic I mean removing any emotion from the matter. The thing about our morality is that most of it is dictated by pragmatism. You are kind to others so that others would be kind to you. Murder and stealing is wrong because you yourself do not wish to be murdered or stolen from. But abortion affects something that has no capacity for consciousness. You can't say you wouldn't want to be aborted because it cannot possibly happen to you, since you have already been born. If it's because it may [I]potentially[/I] lead to someone being born who is a productive member of society, then you're dictating law off alternate realities. There's an infinite number of things that may lead to someone being born, whether someone sneeze on a tuesday, or whether a leaf falls in a puddle. Maybe because I didn't ask out the girl at the coffee shop I prevented the next Einstein from being born. You can't start trying to dictate what people can and can't do with themselves based off an unknowable future.[/QUOTE] The "pragmatic" reason is economic - the state has a vested interest in having taxpayers. An abortion is, by that logic, depriving the state of a viable fetus, at least based on [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey"]current case law[/URL]. In the grand scheme of things, the average child will provide a net economic benefit to society and, more importantly, the state. In law, you can indeed base justifications off alternate realities - expert witness statisticians and economists exist for this very reason. It's not an awfully terrible argument, but it invites the question: if we are regulating abortion on the basis of whether the fetus will provide a net economic benefit, should we allow abortion for fetuses which will, more likely than not, be a net economic loss? For example, those which will be permanently disabled?

[QUOTE=Snowmew;51717165]The "pragmatic" reason is economic - the state has a vested interest in having taxpayers. An abortion is, by that logic, depriving the state of a viable fetus, at least based on [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey"]current case law[/URL]. In the grand scheme of things, the average child will provide a net economic benefit to society and, more importantly, the state.[/QUOTE] If that was someone's argument then I'd respect them for having an actual reason. At that point I'd be interested in debating whether allowing abortions would cause a meaningful loss in potential tax revenue, and if that's worth limiting a woman's right to her body.

[QUOTE=The Vman;51717144]I'm not saying the father shouldn't have a word in the matter. I'd hope that if someone in a couple was considering an abortion then there'd be a thoughtful discussion on the matter between the two. I'm just saying that, since the mother is the only one who physically [I]can[/I] have an abortion, it's her final say as to whether it happens or not. [editline]23rd January 2017[/editline] Like the only way the father could [I]force[/I] the mother to have an abortion is if he either threatens her life or performs it himself.[/QUOTE] To clarify, I personally think it should fall on the mother to decide about an abortion, unless her life is directly threatened by pregnancy/delivery and she is in no direct ability to make rational decisions. But there's situations that would bring this to question. To give a very specific and hypothetical case, what if a wife rapes her husband with the goal to become pregnant, and the husband decides to take it to court ? There'd probably be a lot of debating regarding the actual legitimacy of the child's existence, seeing as a woman getting raped and getting pregnant as a result would usually lead to people justifying/recommending an abortion.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;51717182]To clarify, I personally think it should fall on the mother to decide about an abortion, unless her life is directly threatened by pregnancy/delivery and she is in no direct ability to make rational decisions. But there's situations that would bring this to question. To give a very specific and hypothetical case, what if a wife rapes her husband with the goal to become pregnant, and the husband decides to take it to court ? There'd probably be a lot of debating regarding the actual legitimacy of the child's existence, seeing as a woman getting raped and getting pregnant as a result would usually lead to people justifying/recommending an abortion.[/QUOTE] I don't think there's any legal precedent to force someone to get an abortion. That doesn't sound like something a judge is able to do.

[QUOTE=The Vman;51717177]If that was someone's argument then I'd respect them for having an actual reason. At that point I'd be interested in debating whether allowing abortions would cause a meaningful loss in potential tax revenue, and if that's worth limiting a woman's right to her body.[/QUOTE] I don't really have any issue with current case law either, although my argument is more for the status quo than it is for further criminalizing abortion. It could be twisted into saying that the state has an interest in protecting day-old fertilized cells on that basis; this is what the court in Casey had to weigh against a pregnant woman's undue burden, which is why they figured that viability should be the threshold. It's an interesting read if you like dry case law. It's worth noting that this is just the case currently in the US; at some point, overpopulation would make it a net loss, but we haven't reached that. Not sure if there are really any other pragmatic justifications. [QUOTE=The Vman;51717191]I don't think there's any legal precedent to force someone to get an abortion. That doesn't sound like something a judge is able to do.[/QUOTE] Definitely not in the US. I think China had a case a few years ago.

[QUOTE=Snowmew;51717088]You claim that in law semantics is everything, then you turn around and defer to medical professionals on a wholly legal question. Again, you tiptoe around my questions without actually giving a concrete answer, and instead blindly attack my method of questioning. If a medical professional says that a pregnant woman has [i]precisely[/i] a 51% chance of death, no more, no less, if she continues with childbirth, and [i]precisely[/i] a 1% chance of death if an abortion is performed, do you believe it is justifiable to deny her an abortion and force her to continue knowing that the restriction would cause her a 50% loss of chance at life? The reason we're talking about this "small minority" is because you claim it is the only way women should be allowed to have abortions, but don't actually put your money where your mouth is and come out with a hard-and-fast rule. You prefer to weasel out of commitment by answering vaguely or not at all. Instead of relenting and admitting that you have absolutely no justifiable right to regulate abortions prior to viability (in which case, the argument branches off into "why should a mother house a viable child through the remainder of pregnancy?"), you prefer to stubbornly sit there and say that abortion should be illegal just because you feel that way, and then turn around and try to exploit the law by allowing a medical exception that you don't have a solid justification for. Since there is no way to convince you that your feelings are wrong, the only way to chip away at this specious reasoning is to attack the "weak point" of your stance. If you say "yes, I would stop her from having an abortion", you out yourself as someone who is ready and willing to have, statistically speaking, half of the expectant mothers in that situation die solely because of your moral beliefs. If that is something you are willing to accept, fine. However, in the world of law, which is predominantly the world we're operating in when legislating abortion, why is a child's right to life more important than a mother's? On the contrary, when judging the value of a life in wrongful death suits, a child's life is significantly [i]less[/i] valuable on the grounds that their economic benefit to society will not be realized until they are an adult, and until then, they are essentially a net loss. If you compare the economic value of a dead fetus to an average dead mother, the mother will almost always be more valuable to society. If, instead, you say, "no, I would allow her to have an abortion," it again invites the question: at what point is it [i]not[/i] okay? There is no such thing as a risk-free childbirth, so where do we draw the line? Again, you refuse to answer this question, and instead "defer" to medical professionals, who aren't legal professionals. Ultimately, the end-game of this argument results in your position being indefensible without ascribing economic values to the lives of the mother and child, and having the law "choose" who is to die based on which life is more valuable. If you're not going to ascribe wholly arbitrary probabilities as limits (which you rightfully shouldn't), that's the only answer to what the percentage should be - at which point the economic value of either choice is identical. Is that something you're willing to accept? Because that sounds an awful lot like the whole eugenics thing you were afraid of earlier. A medical exception results in essentially the [i]definition[/i] of eugenics. The only way to avoid that is to either outright ban or outright permit abortions, or decide based on other criteria, but you won't do any of those. And yes, there is your "gotcha" moment.[/QUOTE] I never said abortion should in its entirety be illegal. I have repeatedly stated this. Going back to what I said before, I would personally only want early first term abortions legal. Anything after that, I would want illegal except in dire circumstances I consistently say what I say because I have no personal expertise and therefore cannot give a definite "yes at 51% chance of death or above the abortion is a-ok 100% of the time". You should know that laws rarely pigeonhole something regarding life or death to exact percentages. Hell, my understanding of the medical field leads me to believe that they don't even give exact percentages, but rather ranges. So I would say if the totality of the circumstances indicate a high chance of death for the mother. This is not entirely a legal question, it is also dependent on medical knowledge, something only someone in the field has. Ideally a doctor would have to sign off that the totality of the circumstances indicate that the mother is going to die. This is because on one hand, I would like to think that while people should have to live with the consequences, they shouldn't have to die with them if it is completely beyond their control. But if you're gonna be prissy and complain about how I'm "dancing around a question", then fine. I'll give you my ultimate answer if a gun's to my head. The value of the life of the mother and child are equal, therefore it is wrong to choose one over the other. You bring up civil court, however this matter (as it pertains to this law) is entirely criminal, making civil court irrelevant as the two are entirely different beasts with different standards. In criminal court there is legal precedent that it is immoral and indefensible to kill one person to save another, even if your life is at risk. It is still murder.

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51717213]A 20 year old working-age human is more valuable than a fetus that is a literal drain on resources and nothing more.[/QUOTE] And here snowmew thought I would be the one attributing economic value to people's lives. Jesus.

[QUOTE=Splash Attack;51717044]This link is for state legislature. Here is the link for your U.S. House Representative. [url]http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/[/url] May want to update the OP with this.[/QUOTE] Done.

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51717229]Do you have an argument against me?[/QUOTE] See Snowmew's post. You're attributing economic value to right to life, which is a dangerous and scary road to go down. Cause it leads to eugenics and in extremes, genocide. Also, as a I said about, there is legal precedent that all life is equal.

[QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51717203]I never said abortion should in its entirety be illegal. I have repeatedly stated this. Going back to what I said before, I would personally only want early first term abortions legal. Anything after that, I would want illegal except in dire circumstances I consistently say what I say because I have no personal expertise and therefore cannot give a definite "yes at 51% chance of death or above the abortion is a-ok 100% of the time". You should know that laws rarely pigeonhole something regarding life or death to exact percentages. Hell, my understanding of the medical field leads me to believe that they don't even give exact percentages, but rather ranges. So I would say if the totality of the circumstances indicate a high chance of death for the mother. This is not entirely a legal question, it is also dependent on medical knowledge, something only someone in the field has. Ideally a doctor would have to sign off that the totality of the circumstances indicate that the mother is going to die. This is because on one hand, I would like to think that while people should have to live with the consequences, they shouldn't have to die with them if it is completely beyond their control. But if you're gonna be prissy and complain about how I'm "dancing around a question", then fine. I'll give you my ultimate answer if a gun's to my head. The value of the life of the mother and child are equal, therefore it is wrong to choose one over the other. You bring up civil court, however this matter (as it pertains to this law) is entirely criminal, making civil court irrelevant as the two are entirely different beasts with different standards. In criminal court there is legal precedent that it is immoral and indefensible to kill one person to save another, even if your life is at risk. It is still murder.[/QUOTE] I never said you said abortion should be totally illegal; in fact, I am [i]guiding[/i] you to that conclusion on the basis that medical exceptions are inherently eugenics in disguise, which you claimed wasn't to your fancy. So your answer is, once again, inconclusive. The law indeed prescribes an ultimate exact percentage in loss of chance med mal wrongful death cases, regardless of your vague knowledge of procedure. Otherwise, the court would award a "range" of damages - nonsense. Even ignoring that, given the hypothetical in which the chances [i]were[/i] resolute, you refuse to answer. So, your ultimate conclusion is just arbitrary bullshit (a "high chance of death" or a "totality of the circumstances [indicating] that the mother is going to die", which means nothing as it does not define an objective, or even reasonable, threshold) based on emotions and has no grounding in medicine, law, statistics, nor economics. If the value of the life of a mother and child are equal, you are essentially arguing that if the child's probability of survival exceeds the mother's chance of death (ignoring the chance of abortion complications as an alternative), the state should prohibit an abortion as to favor the child, correct? In which case, can you justify banning abortion for a mother with a 95% chance of death and a child with a 99% chance of survival? Additionally, are you willing to allow an abortion for a mother with a 25% chance of death and a child with a 20% chance of survival? These are the problems that legislators and judges have to grapple with when doing this stuff, which you clearly aren't up to the task of doing, and instead would rather hide behind the vague wall of only allowing early-term abortions (limited by, I presume, heartbeat detection) and a vague medical exception, because that's just, like, your opinion, man. And to briefly touch on your "it's still murder" point, self-defense is generally not murder, it's homicide. The killing of a human being is not the only stipulation of murder. [QUOTE=Cap'nSpacePants;51717219]And here snowmew thought I would be the one attributing economic value to people's lives. Jesus.[/QUOTE] If you don't attribute economic value to peoples' lives in this determination, you have absolutely no justification to ascribe any exceptions or specific limits to abortion beyond "ban it entirely" or "allow it entirely", because your threshold would be completely arbitrary.