What do you think about abortion

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It was just meant as an objective statement which would apply equally on both sides. Obviously I don't share your POV, but rules are rules. I don't know if you're "more guilty" in this thread, but you did challenge Zero on what qualifies him to hold the position he has. I'm not a lawyer--just a former paralegal and married another former paralegal with a lot more experience with lawyers--nor am I a doctor or a nurse. I am, however, a human being capable of rational thoughts and emotions just as (I assume) Shatbat is. My comments weren't intended to be denigrating to either side. What you're guilty of in this thread is bringing up someone else's qualifications for making a statement despite the fact that those qualifications are irrelevant. That Zero just happens to be a lawyer is just par for the course!

(And no, it doesn't only count if I disagree with you.)

10% failure rate? Are you sure you've got good information on that? With that probability, I should have more kids than the Duggars.

It is 2-3% when properly used and around 20% overall (including both optimal and suboptimal). Perhaps better education on how to use a condom is needed, but even those who use the condom wrong would at least have the intent to practice safe sex, and I place great value on intent. The 20% would actually double my initial estimate! And remember it is only the US; there are 62 million of potentially fertile women in the US compared to 1800 in the whole world.
Among the few things I know about statistics is that when they deal with large scale things such as countries or multinationals or the world etc. I am bound to run into very large numbers I don't usually deal with day-to-day. If only a 0.06% of women in the world had pregnancies because of faulty condoms, that would be enough to talk about millions

What I'm 'guilty' of is telling him that he's pulling stuff out of his ass, which he is. He brought up the HCP/rescuer comparison, and then flips out when some parts of the comparison don't go the way he wants; he extrapolates from existing law onto a hypothetical in ways that contravene common sense; and he makes statements about the requirements of medical care that are considerably more extreme than reality. If he were correct about patient abandonment, for example, no HCP could ever transfer care to another HCP, ever, if the patient disagreed with the transfer; no doctor could ever decline to see a patient if the doctor had already established a relationship with that patient, unless the patient dismissed the doctor; and no rescuer could ever leave the scene of a rescue, regardless of the time or physical limitations involved.
Patient-centered practice is one thing, but the claims that Zero is making simply defy morality as well as common sense. HCPs are not slaves to their patients.
edit: also, no life-preserving care could be ended without a court order. One would think that hospitals should be crawling with lawers.

Your thought experiment has simply no legal precedent, that's why I didn't get into it. And you did call him out for not being a lawyer or being related to rescue (and to be honest I found the fact that he turned out to be BOTH of them a bit amusing ) And if you take small disagreements, them extrapolate towards big hypothetical situations like the one you posed, they are bound to become big disagreements. It's a good thing if used well, big disagreements are easier to handle and it is also easier to see where the disagreement comes from.
I do not see how his ideas would lead to all the consequences you said, and I feel the need to remind you that your concept of common sense or morality are not universal, or mine or anybody else's for that matter. And I'd still like you to answer my latest post on your thought experiment, it has your name highlighted on it for your convenience. Unless you don't want to, I believe on free will after all

Yes, I'll take his word for it that he's both a lawyer and an EMT... despite the fact that, contra Roe V. Wade, he thinks that abortion is about whether or not the zef is "alive," and despite the fact that he thinks that court orders are required to pull the plug any time life support is removed, and despite the fact that he thinks that a rescuer has to remain with a rescuee until the cows come home.

You'll have to forgive me for having been mistake about his credentials... as he was mistaken about mine.

I'll try not to make anything personal and I appologize if it became that.

Certainly, until there is a definitive ruling on when life begins, you can see things both ways.

All things are done within reason. Letting a HCP leave their post when someone comes to relieve them is vastly different than an HCP leaving their post when there is nobody to relieve them KNOWING that it will jeopardize the patient. If the relief HCP is incompetent, they will be accountable for their actions and the employer equally liable. Keeping an HCP on the job indefinitely is legally unreasonable. Requiring an HCP to no just get up and abandon their patient is NOT legally unreasonable.

There would also be the question of why the HCP left, for how long, etc. An HCP having to go use the bathroom is vastly different than one wanting to take off for 15 minutes for a sexual tryst with an orderly in the linen closet. The first is very understandable. The second is utterly unprofessional.

More so, we are getting a little out of hand here. My issue is that once you commit to providing support to someone, and ending that support would jeopardize their life, you can't just walk away because your act of abandonment is tantamount to killing them. You have the right to refuse to start. You have the right to ask to be let out of your obligation once it starts, but you can't just unilaterally "walk away" once another person's life is dependent on a choice you willingly made.

I'm presuming things from a US standard, but at an accident scene, EMTs and other rescuers CAN NOT abandon care once it begins until someone else takes over command of the situation. As a first responder, once I start, I must remain and do what I can until someone equally or better qualified arrives who agrees to take over the providing of care. Normally, this is simple. The cops/paramedics/fire truck arrive and someone there is trained more than I am. They take over, and I'm free to leave. Even with providing CPR...once you start, you do not stop until you are too exhausted to continue or someone else takes over (or if qualified enough, pronounces the victim deceased). I don't think anyone's been criminally or civilly charged for stopping CPR for lesser reasons (as the victim was already in CP arrest), but the medical and legal principle is that you do not abandon your patient until the proper steps are taken to ensure someone else will take over or that it is permissible for you to cease providing care.

Zero, you made the claim that an HCP/rescuer would be legally required to stay with a patient for 9 months if there was no relief to take over for them, so we're not really talking about being paid to do something. There's no employer here.

Wrt. EMTs, you're correct: they keep going until someone else takes over... at the end of their shift, if necessary. But there's no pretense in the law that EMTs or RNs must give up their social lives for the job: that they must pull hours or days of overtime, for example, if something happens to their relief, and they have children to take care of outside of the job. We all - including pregnant women - have responsibilities to multiple people, not just to the job, and some of those responsibilities are as important or more important.

Wrt. 'when life begins,' as I stated before, that's irrelevant. A zygote is alive, and so is an unfertilized ovum. What's relevant wrt. the law - which you should know - is when *personhood* begins, and whether the rights to privacy and bodily autonomy of one person - the woman in question - trump the rights of the potential person in the form of the zef, or whether the rights of the zef trump the rights of the woman.

And, regarding our hypothetical scenario, there's a question of whether or not having sex is consenting to being pregnant in the same way that starting CPR is consenting to continue CPR until exhaustion or relief (there is also an exception for 'obvious' death of the patient, for example decapitation, pooled lividity, etc).

^ I thought it was still about your thought experiment instead of about pregnancy.

@AngelRho: If you're still around, there are some questions I'd want to ask you to see where you stand. I already know that you recognize the necessity of abortion in the cases of rape and the fetus jeopardizing the mother's life, but I'd love to know what your position is in the following scenarios:
- The fetus is unviable and will most certainly die anyway; letting nature run its course takes longer and puts more stress in the mother than just terminating the pregnancy right away
- The one I want to hear from you the most: A woman doesn't even try to practice safe sex (Not that it failed for reasons beyond her control, she just didn't. So it could be said she and the guy behaved irresponsibly) And then she gets pregnant, but she really, really, doesn't want the baby, and while the zef is in there she feels extreme depression, suicidal thoughts even, and her life is made a living hell. Should this woman be forced to "take responsibility for her actions" and go through this pregnancy even if it psychologically destroys her or harms her greatly, or would you say abortion is justified in this scenario?

I'm watching you now.
Kjas sees all.

I believe that words like "zef," "zygote," "embryo," and "fetus" are really just excuses to avoid recognizing a growing baby as a "human." I say life is life regardless of the stage of development. I'm aware, as we all should be, that sperm and eggs are "life" as well and for the sake of the discussion at hand are also "human life," but they are only part of a whole, no more significant than skin cells. The difference is the uniqueness and individuality of a tiny human versus that of the constituent cells that precede it--sperm and eggs belong to father and mother. A growing human belongs to itself.

That said, look at your scenario in this way: "The elderly cancer patient is unviable and will most likely die anyway; letting nature run its course takes longer and puts more stress on her husband than just terminating her life right away."

If that makes anyone uncomfortable, then the idea of terminating a pregnancy for ANY reason should be just as disturbing.

Oh, and I find war and the death penalty just as disturbing as well. I recognize the necessity of terminating life in certain situations. I'm just cold and heartless enough to kill someone to defend myself or my family, but I'm not so cold and heartless to say that killing someone, even justified, wouldn't haunt me for the rest of my life.


People make mistakes and bad choices all the time. Even if you practice safe(r) sex, contraceptive CAN fail. I believe it is wrong to deprive someone of the consequences for their irresponsible behavior. And if it is possible for something to be more wrong, it is most certainly more wrong to deprive someone the consequences of their behavior when they know full well the risks involved.

Let's put it another way: If someone gets drunk and operates a motor vehicle, knowing full well the risks they take behind the wheel, and someone ends up dead, should that person by forced to "take responsibility for his actions" and go through a vehicular homicide trial and prison time even if it psychologically destroys him or harms him greatly, or would you say letting him go free is justified in this scenario?

And one last thing--the discussion tends to focus ONLY on the person responsible for terminating life. Nothing is said about the life that is terminated. What about the elderly cancer patient? What about the person who dies in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver? What about the toddler who gets shot in a drive-by shooting? Oh that was just an accident. I was trying to kill his daddy... I can't feel sorry for people who want to get rid of other people like that. "He was trying to kill me, so I broke his neck." I can work with that. "He raped me when I was 14 years old, I was still a virgin, and it's not fair for me to have to live with something that isn't my fault." "I would have died if I'd had this baby, and it was a painful decision that I had to make." Now THAT I can work with.

I'm not a woman, so there is an inherent difficulty in trying to "tell a woman what she can/can't do with her body." I get that. Nobody wants to take human rights away from anyone else. Nobody is trying to tell someone what can be done with his/her body. What we ARE trying to tell someone they can/can't do is with someone else's body. If you look at it from the perspective that all human life is valuable and deserves protection, it's no longer about women's rights. That is something anyone, male or female, can speak to.

Even in the case that it is definitely going to die within the next 30 days, and that the mother will also lose her life when she haemorrhages? Is it really worth throwing her life away or at very least placing it at unacceptably high risk so needlessly, which can be saved when the other is already a certainty?

But just as there are differences between a child and an adult there are differences among a z, e, or f and between any of those and a child. And my use of the term zef is meant to reflect that those are my personal beliefs. If you want to call a zef a baby as a reflection of your own personal beliefs then I take no issue with it, all I ask is that you don't make me go against mine and call them babies too.
And I must ask you: What makes a zef more valuable than an Alzheimer's patient?

That one is yours. A zef has always less brain activity than most Alzheimer's patients, early zefs don't even have a brain in the first place, so why are they as valuable as any other human? I cannot really go further without some clarification on this issue.

And I'm not asking you to see it as not-disturbing, I personally think abortion is disturbing as well. But as you said, there may be situations where such things are justified.

I just realized that post I quoted was a satire of a previous Walrus post, so please forget that and I'll edit in my answer here.

If we can't agree on this point then further discussion will be moot. I respect a zef's ability to become a sentient human being in the future, and I respect a brain dead body, or even a corpse, as something formerly alive. But you probably consider a brain dead person as having the same rights and the same value as someone fully alive; I don't. To me, a brain dead person is a collection of cells, of organs, that has no will on its own and stops being an end by itself. It having a heartbeat and being composed of still-living cells, or not, does not really matter. On Alzheimer's, one thing I know is that if I ever get diagnosed by it and start feeling the effects of dementia, I will kill myself while I have the mental faculties to do so as I can't bear the thought of my loved ones or a poor nurse to have to take care of the everyday needs of a husk where my mind used to reside, so I'd rather just die than allow that to happen.

That's why I simply can't accept your analogies; a cancer patient is still of sound mind so he can't be killed unless it is his wish to do so, and if someone gets into a car accident and kills someone else, that someone else was still of sound mind and the killer should be punished. If someone stabbed my brain-dead body I would consider it rather disrespectful, (or actually zi just wouldn't be able to consider things anymore, if there is even an I to speak of) but not murder. Which is a moot point, if I go brain dead my organs will go to people who can actually use them so I wouldn't be in such a position in the first place. Or if that person damages one of my organs in the process, now THAT is something he should be punished for.

No, actually YOU made that claim. I asserted the legal principle that once you agree to be responsible for someone's life you simply cannot abandon it. This is true for HCPs as well as if you agreed to be physically attached to someone. Obviously, HCPs have a system in place so other HCPs step in and relieve them at the end of the shift. Nonetheless, the issue of ABANDONMENT would still apply if a HCP simply walked off the job knowing the patient in their care would suffer harm by their doing that.



Pregnancy is the natural consequence of sex, and birth control is not a 100% certainty that it will not happen. Hence, if you know getting pregnant is a possible outcome when you CHOOSE to have sex, then your choice to have sex is the proximate cause to your becoming pregnant.

^ but then the only two choices left would be abstinence or complete sterilization. There are many reasons to have sex other than reproductive ones, and someone who practices it safely should not be held responsible for it.