Ohio's Issue #1 and Abortion Politics: Are we learning anything?

[Josh]

Now that the Supreme Court threw out any sort Federal standards for abortion, each state is doing it own thing. That was the point of Dobbs. If Ohio legalizes abortion in November it won't be because some activists demand it. It will be because a majority of voters approve it under the laws of the state. Just as Dobbs anticipated. Or did you naively think that the repeal of Roe would only move the needle in one direction?

Such a ballot initiative would have been entirely legal before the repeal of Roe, which raises the question of why pro-abortion activists didn’t try to pass it back then.

[Ken]

And 150 years ago, people didn’t think slaves were fully human. The fact that people in the past thought something doesn’t make it actually true.

But the debate about abortion in America is not about edge cases, but about abortion-on-demand for third trimester abortion right up until moments before a woman gives birth. Let’s review the “partial birth abortion”, which is what abortion advocates and the left tell us should be legal:

During the surgery, the fetus is removed from the uterus in the breech position. If the fetal presentation is not breech, forceps or manual manipulation can be used to turn it to a breech presentation while in the uterus (internal version). The fetal skull is usually the largest part of the fetal body and its removal may require mechanical collapse if it is too large to fit through the cervical canal. Decompression of the skull can be accomplished by incision and suction of the brain or by using forceps to collapse the skull

In other words, a baby exactly the same size as a newborn literally has its skull stabbed open and its brains sucked out, or it’s crushed through sheer force from a pair of forceps.

I don’t think it should be legal to crush a baby’s skull or stab it and suck its brains out.

Can you explain why a 3rd trimester abortion is morally different from taking a morning after pill like Plan B?

Is a fetus at say 20 weeks more human than a 2 day old embryo?

[RZehr]

I think it is more human. But not in an important way that is relevant to the topic, and not in anyway different with regard to the morality of killing it.

[Josh]

And 150 years ago, people didn’t think slaves were fully human. The fact that people in the past thought something doesn’t make it actually true.

But the debate about abortion in America is not about edge cases, but about abortion-on-demand for third trimester abortion right up until moments before a woman gives birth. Let’s review the “partial birth abortion”, which is what abortion advocates and the left tell us should be legal:

During the surgery, the fetus is removed from the uterus in the breech position. If the fetal presentation is not breech, forceps or manual manipulation can be used to turn it to a breech presentation while in the uterus (internal version). The fetal skull is usually the largest part of the fetal body and its removal may require mechanical collapse if it is too large to fit through the cervical canal. Decompression of the skull can be accomplished by incision and suction of the brain or by using forceps to collapse the skull

In other words, a baby exactly the same size as a newborn literally has its skull stabbed open and its brains sucked out, or it’s crushed through sheer force from a pair of forceps.

I don’t think it should be legal to crush a baby’s skull or stab it and suck its brains out.

Can you explain why a 3rd trimester abortion is morally different from taking a morning after pill like Plan B?

Is a fetus at say 20 weeks more human than a 2 day old embryo?

I claim that both are fully human just like a baby, an adult, or a slave. At various points in history, some people have claimed a slave isn’t fully human and could be killed without consequence by his or her owner.

In any case, though, stabbing a baby’s head or crushing its skull seems especially egregious to me and is particularly morally indefensible, just like claiming slaves were property like cattle was.