Posts by George Darroch
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There’s a really good illustration of how quickly this change has occurred (source with code), and the tipping point seems to have come in 2013.
I’d like to think about what all of this means for a country which thinks of itself as “liberal” and “progressive”, but which sometimes stutters towards progress.
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A saturation of saturation? I'm glad that repetition is a key element of electronic music.
I love what Bic & Kody mean. They seem to float warmly above the surface of the earth, occasionally making contact. All the leaves are green, and the sky is blue...
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Gosh, what a saturation of electronically-saturated goodness.
In other news, Disclosure have decided that their new album is also a film. I'd watch it.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I’m happy for at some point the medical system may step in and say “no, an abortion is not appropriate anymore”. So long as all the way up to that point the mother is choosing a legal act that is, under law, her decision. Even at that point there must be no suggestion that the mother is a criminal.
Such a state would make abortion legal (with exceptions).
I think that's going to be the consensus position. There are clearly differences between 6, 16, and 36 weeks.
There are two questions being asked here:
What is politically acceptable. (Being something that will be endorsed by a majority of the population and their representatives.)
What is right.I think that most of us have a more permissive answer to the second of these questions than the first. But I don't think the gap between them is huge. I think we also have the opportunity to move these closer together, so that we get a solution that is passable (to answer Lamia's questions) and also provides the great majority of women who want and need abortions with free and easy access to them.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Even if you decide that at some point a fetus is “human” you are asking, no forcing, another human to risk their life and health for that fetus.
Yes.
Childbirth is not easy, and nor is it completely safe. In every 100,000 live births, 15 women die.
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Because at that point the fetus has sufficient character to be considered human.
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at some point you value the life of the fetus more than the freedom of the mother.
Yes.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to BenWilson,
Even if there is objective morality, not just subjective or cultural, we still face the problem of how to make it happen, and in NZ that unfortunately involves convincing a hell of a lot of OWGs.
And plenty of OWW.
I'm convinced that there is a consensus to allow safe and accessible abortion. The curve that Ben has described is real. The first few weeks, and the months after that, are at the top end of that support curve. Of course there are going to be people who oppose even at that point, but they are immaterial to this debate.
But if you don't define your terms, you create an absence. That allows the opposition to frame the debate and fill the 'facts' they want, and means that politicians are operating in a position of uncertainty. They hate that, and won't respond favourably even if they are on your side - as I'm sure that a majority are.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to George Darroch,
It’s my opinion that either you change these people’s perceptions, or you find the point that will get the great majority of current abortions legalised
Which might just be a patronising way of saying "be realistic" and "advocate for incremental change".
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Deborah,
Yes, it’s a vexed moral issue, and there is no clear dividing line between human person / not human person. We’re fairly clear that a baby is a human person (Peter Singer <i>et al</i> not withstanding), and we’re fairly clear that a newly fertilised egg is not (various religious types not withstanding). So we leave it to individuals to decide.
So when people say that women shouldn’t have the right to choose for themselves whether or not they carry a pregnancy or terminate it, we are treating them as moral infants. We say that they are incapable of making that moral choice for themselves.
Absolutely. In this day and age, laws are generally written to give a high degree of moral and intellectual autonomy to individuals. We usually only constrain them when that autonomy causes significant harm to others - for example free speech becomes fraud under certain circumstances. We treat people as moral infants where we think their behaviour will cause harm.
Limit cases are important, because they define the edge of what is acceptable. If we state that autonomy of the woman is a superseding factor from a certain point until birth, that is a moral judgement.
That point might be consciousness, nocioception, assisted viability, 'natural' viability, or some other defining characteristic or bundle of characteristics. I'm fine with other people advocating that the woman's autonomy supersedes all of these, but there is a large group of people who would not, and as each point in the fetus' development is reached that group gets larger.
These people are the reason this law has not changed - to answer Lamia's question.
It's my opinion that either you change these people's perceptions, or you find the point that will get the great majority of current abortions legalised.
